Vindices
by Riddelly
Summary: The Church of the Holy Shield, run by Pastor Nicholas Fury, has always communed with angels. Yet when the mysterious artifact they've long housed, the Tesseract, is stolen by a green-eyed creature claiming to be the very Devil, the six most powerful and deadly of these supernatural beings must band together to fight what may be their most costly battle yet. Avenging Angels AU.
1. I

**A/N** _It was ages ago that I saw a fantastic series of paintings by brilcrist on tumblr, all depicting the Avengers as angels. I thought it was a great AU, but never quite got around to writing it-until now, that is. I've written the first third of what I've outlined as a fifteen-chapter, and I've chosen that I may or may not continue it beyond that based on the feedback that I receive. So, if you like this, LET ME KNOW! After five chapters are posted, I'll decide whether or not more will be written. _

**Disclaimer** _I don't own the Avengers or any associated characters, events, etc. Additionally, the cover image used is not mine, but rather property of brilcrist (on tumblr and deviantART) and will be taken down at request. _

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**I**

Only the children were screaming.

It was foolish, Pastor Nicholas Fury thought bitterly as he pulled his long coat tighter around him, that people should even bring their children to church at such a late hour. They never paid attention, anyways, but it was useless to try and school them into better behavior when they were already exhausted.

He had been exhausted. Exhausted enough to allow himself a night away from Holy Shield Church, to leave everything to his associate pastor, Phil Coulson. Coulson was good—devout, and he did his work well—but _of course, _Fury reflected as he stood before Holy Shield, of course it would be a night when he himself was away that this would happen.

Of course, he wasn't exactly sure what _this _was, yet.

The church was a large building, old and strong, crafted of dark and surprisingly resilient wood on the sides, paler siding on the front. It was a rather out-of-place sight in the middle of the sleek city, but it was home—the closest thing to home that Fury ever had. Its steeple cut a clean, pure path into the sky, a pearly streak before the tapestry of darkness, and a black cross hung at its front, clear against the lighter material.

It would have looked normal, even peaceful, if not for the crowds of people pouring rapidly out of it.

The entire evening service, or so it seemed. Mothers wrapped tight arms around wailing children, while other adults shoved those nearby them aside in their haste to escape. Fury's stomach clenched briefly—could it be a fire? Was his beloved church to be destroyed?—but, no, there wasn't a lick of flame or wisp of smoke anywhere in sight. Besides, Coulson wouldn't have called him in for something like that.

"Fury? Do you know what's going on?"

Fury turned to see Maria Hill, a priestess of the church, sprinting out of her own car, her dark hair hastily pinned up and her blue eyes wide with alarm. So Coulson had called her in, as well. He shook his head and gestured that she come closer, speaking rapidly.

"Make sure that everyone gets out safely, understand? Check the bathrooms, closets, everything. I don't want a single living soul in this church who doesn't work under me."

"Sir—"

"Pastor. You came."

Fury, who had been moving towards the door as he spoke, looked up to see the familiar face of Phil Coulson before him—the man was standing at attention, absentmindedly ushering people out with his hands.

"What's going on?" Fury demanded.

"I can't say. Selvig—he was in the basement, with… _it. _And then there was noise, and… some sort explosion, I—"

"He's still down there?"

Coulson hesitated, apparently on the verge of saying more, then gave terse nod. "Yes, sir."

"I'm going down. You and Hill clear this place out. It needs to be _empty. _This could be dangerous—very dangerous. Understood?"

"Of course."

"Good."

Without further hesitation, he continued through the tall, narrow doors, his coat billowing in the cool night breeze. Almost none of the church's attendees recognized him out of his usual pastoral robes—either that, or they were simply too distracted to pay any heed to the faces passing them by; after all, it was hard to mistake the eye patch affixed over the left side of Fury's face, a remnant of a long-ago incident. An incident that had led to Holy Shield Church being the only one in the nation—probably in the world—with a definite connection to angels.

The rest of the Catholic churches, of course, had no idea. The angels were a secret that Holy Shield kept to itself, for a number of reasons—the simplest of them being that the creatures themselves desired disguise, anonymity. They may have chosen to bless this single New York church with their presence, but that didn't mean they wanted to be known across the country, for their veil of mystery to be stripped away and reveal the creatures underneath. As long as Fury and the rest didn't publicize them, they continued to connect to the church, and that was what mattered.

And it was, undoubtedly, something connected to them that was going on now. Fury wasn't sure whether to positively or negatively anticipate this as he pounded through the thin, dark hallways of the ancient building, making his way to the back stairs—as Coulson had said, Selvig, another particularly good priest, was currently in the basement, and that was where he was headed now.

The usually brilliant stained glass windows lining the dark-wooded walls were dark and hollow-looking in the nearly abandoned building, and the candles that Fury himself lit each evening were out, every single one of them, some with thin whispers of smoke still trailing from their wicks. Something about the entire place was undeniably dark, eerie, and the barely-developed cement stairs in the back which he descended now, being damp and chilled as always, only lent to the impression.

Like Coulson had promised, Erik Selvig stood in the shadowed room, lit only by a single electric light fixture dangling from the ceiling. His back was to Fury, and he was facing a table—a table that housed an artifact very familiar to Fury.

"The Tesseract?" he demanded, pacing forwards. Selvig barely looked surprised as he turned around—he was still in his robes from an earlier service, and a light layer of sweat touched his forehead under a shock of gray hair.

"Pastor," Selvig greeted him, his voice rasping and tense. "Yes, it—it began behaving strangely, I can't—"

"Behaving? It's an inanimate object, Selvig." Fury paced over to the table, ignoring as Selvig drew away and reaching out to place his hands on either side of the object sitting there.

The Tesseract wasn't the source of the church's power, but rather a token of it—it had appeared a couple of months ago, in this exact place, without explanation. Visually, it was small enough—a cube perhaps three square inches per side, and brilliantly gold. Gold beyond gold—shining brighter than the metal itself, glimmering tendrils seeming to slip off wherever light touched it. Its function was unknown, at least to those in Holy Shield, but it was unquestionable that it had been a gift from the angels, and they hadn't questioned that, hadn't even touched it since its delivery. It had been practically forgotten, stored here in the basement.

Now, however, it was ready to make itself noticed.

"We don't know _what _it is," Selvig pointed out, leaning over Fury's shoulder to get a better look at the glimmering object. Fury lifted his hands and moved them close to the cube's surface, frowning slightly as a tingle of warmth brushed against his skin.

"Radiating heat," he mused.

"Not just radiating it. The thing has been heating up more and more—not stopping at all. If it increases much more, it's going to set the place on fire. And that's not all—look, there! Right now!"

Fury hadn't needed Selvig's indication to see what was happening—within the cube itself, at an imbalanced angle that seemed to be another dimension entirely, there was a twist of light—pure white light, flexing and twirling playfully under and within the bronzed surface. In sync with the flash, another wave of heat rolled off of the cube, this one more intense than the last.

"Bizarre," Fury breathed to himself, but was cut off by the sharp, unmistakable noise of flapping wings, as well as a muffled cry of alarm from Selvig. A small smirk curled the pastor's mouth, and he looked up, folding his hands behind his back.

"Uriel," he greeted evenly.

Standing on the other side of the long, low room, looking as if he'd been there all along, was a third man—younger than Fury and Selvig, with close-cropped brown hair and a leanly muscled frame. Something flashed briefly behind his shoulders—something massive and white—but vanished within the space of blink, not giving Fury any time to focus on it.

"Let me see it," the brown-haired man demanded, pacing towards them. Fury inclined his head slightly and stepped back, while Selvig continued to sputter in disbelief.

"But—but that's—but he wasn't—"

"Selvig," Fury said evenly, beginning to smirk, "this is Uriel. Uriel, Erik Selvig."

"A pleasure." Uriel's tone was resonant, somehow; of normal pitch, and yet heavy, pressing in almost painfully on the eardrums even as he spoke at a hushed volume. There was an odd quality to him physically, as well—in the corner of one's eye, he seemed to almost change shape, to grow and twist, though the unsteady image was erased as soon as he was brought back into focus.

"But he—"

"Uriel is an angel—the archer of Heaven," Fury elaborated plainly, with little elaboration. A small, shocked exhalation emerged from Selvig's lips. Uriel turned and bent in, examining the Tesseract carefully, while Fury continued to speak. "One of those particularly connected to the church. He has appeared to our benefit several times in the past, and we owe him more than is imaginable. You did know, of course, about our supernatural connections?"

"An—an angel," Selvig breathed again, slowly lowering to his knees. "I—"

"Get up, man, we don't have time for this," Uriel barked. "Fury, when did it start?"

"Maybe half an hour ago," Fury replied evenly while Selvig scrambled to his feet.

"And you haven't touched it?"

"Not once."

"Then nothing is wrong with it from this end," Uriel mused softly. Fury frowned slightly, and then, all at once, the angel's eyes flew wide, and he was swiftly stepping backwards—each of his movements had a lithe grace to them, so that even the hasty motion was more flowing than stumbling. "The other side must be coming."

"The other side?" Fury's frown deepened, and Uriel dipped his head in a nod, his shoulders flexing as his arms extended protectively, blocking the Tesseract from the other two men.

"The Tesseract isn't just a shiny brick, you know, Pastor. This object is a gateway to Hell."

Selvig stifled a whimper as the muscles of Uriel's back, clear under his thin, dark jacket, contracted almost spasmodically. Then two billowing curtains of light shot from them—thin, delicate, and pure, pure white. It took the space of two seconds for them to resolve themselves into definite shapes—slender wings, reaching several feet in either direction, translucent and somehow metaphysical, even in their powerful solidity. Even Fury's single eye widened at the sight—he had seen angels' wings before, of course, but it had been years, and it was all too easy to forget just how brightly they shown.

"He's coming!" Uriel bellowed, and now his voice was absolutely deafening, far too powerful to come from the single man that it apparently did. Fury stiffened, his fingers curling and cutting into his palms, as a pillar of light bloomed from the Tesseract—massive and blinding enough that both humans released twin yells, reaching up to turn away and block their eyes. Regardless, though, the light was still visible, burning through the wall of darkness, piercing and definite. A huge splintering noise came with it—the _ceiling, _Fury realized in horror, the thing was plunging into the very ceiling.

Less than five seconds passed, however, before everything went dark, leaving only silver afterimages dancing behind Fury's eyelid. He cracked it open nervously, now barely noticing the vividness of Uriel's wings in contrast to what had just emerged from the Tesseract. It took several seconds of blinking to reveal what was standing in the splintered remains of the table that had held it—the holy object itself, he noted, was cast off to the side; dusty and light amidst the splinters of wood that surrounded its small form.

There was a man where the blazing light had been—a man clothed in a black suit, with greasy shoulder-length hair hanging before his pale face and hands clenched at his sides, knuckles whitened and almost bluish. As Fury and Selvig watched in wonder, the strange new person's chest heaved slightly with a harsh breath, and his head tilted up—just enough to reveal rather soft features pulled together by wide, dark-ringed eyes, and it was the eyes that drew Fury's breath from his lungs, paralyzed him—they were gold; the very gold, in fact, of the Tesseract, blazing and practically glowing in the greasy hollows of his skin.

"Stay back," Uriel began, his feathers twitching in defense as the muscles of his wings tensed near the shoulders.

The intruder rose to his full height, disregarding the angel and smiling slowly, brutally. His teeth gleamed pure white against his dirty skin. "Brother," he breathed—his voice was soft, accented, and carried the same sort of resounding tenor in it as Uriel's. "Oh, it has been a while."

Then an echoing crack filled the small room, and massive shadows lit behind the newcomer—wide, pulsing shapes that soon solidified themselves into wings, as well. Wings slightly smaller than Uriel's, their edges curved more delicately, wickedly, and seeming to be made of smoke rather than light. Selvig gasped, but Fury was beyond disbelief—he simply watched, on edge, intent. The dark-haired being launched himself forward, and the wings beat heavily as he thrust himself across the room, arms forcing forwards a staff that was suddenly clutched in his hands—golden as his eyes, long and slender and deadly, with a curved silver blade jutting from its intricately designed head. Fury opened his mouth to release a pointless warning, but it was too late—the man extended the staff, just enough for it to brush against Uriel's chest, pricking against the fabric of the jacket there.

Fury stumbled backwards, nearly hitting the wall, as the angel's back stiffened and straightened, his wings folding back into invisibility. "Selvig!" he snarled, but the priest stood silently, staring as Uriel slowly took a step forwards, moving to stand beside the stranger. His eyes were no longer the pale gray-blue of before—now they glowed with a faint, smoldering golden light, like those of the figure beside him, but with far less intensity.

As Fury gazed on in mute horror, the man proceeded to prod the same staff into Selvig's chest, a wicked smirk curving his lips as the priest tensed and his eyes began to shine with a dull golden hint. And then, with his opposition successfully made docile, the staff-bearer turned, finally staring Fury head-on, glowing gold eyes to dark brown.

"Who are you?" Fury snarled. Something inside of him stung with fear and confusion—he'd lost his allies, lost the angel who'd been defending Holy Shield for decades—but he didn't dare to let the doubt slip into his speech. He had to be strong. Confident. He had to, at the very least, bide their time until Hill and Coulson could help everyone out of the church.

"A holy man," was the whispered response. "You are, that is. I can see it in you… faith, bitter faith. You would know me, I believe, as Lucifer."

"Lucifer," Fury repeated, his chest seeming to freeze into solid ice. Lucifer. The Devil. Satan. Everything he'd ever been taught to fear—everything he'd ever dreaded, prayed to avoid, sought defense from. _Lucifer. _

"Light-bearer," Lucifer crooned, tilting his staff and running a pale finger along its sharpened edge, "that's what it means."

"So I've heard. What, are you fresh out of hell? Ready to wreak havoc on the world and send us screaming into devastation?"

"Nearly, but no need to be so hasty, now, dear man. It is not pure destruction that I desire upon your race… I have had time, far too much time, to think better of myself. Time over which Earth has only succeeded in working itself farther into the depths of hopeless chaos. It needs to be tamed… tamed like a wild beast, an analogy that I believe you primitive creatures can comprehend."

"And you're going to take the reins?"

"Whoever else?" Lucifer turned and began to pace up and down the room, his polished shoes tapping on the splintered floor. At an apparently silent signal, Uriel and Selvig moved to the staircase, standing at each side as if to guard it. After a brief hesitation, Fury took it as permission to move forwards, and did so—keeping his steps light and quick, he headed for the Tesseract and scooped it up immediately, wincing at the fading but still sharp heat against the exposed skin of his palms. Disregarding everything that Uriel had said, he knew that he couldn't let Lucifer keep the artifact now—it was best that it was in his possession, surely, than no one's at all.

"It isn't going to work, you know," Fury growled. "Humanity is much stronger than creatures like you wish to think."

"Creatures like me?" Lucifer spun delicately on his heel, an almost gentle smirk creasing his thin mouth. "Oh, but I am _the _creature, don't you see? Everything that you fear… everything that your people have ever feared. You have created this entire monument, and so many thousands like it"—his hands tilted upwards, as if to encompass the church itself—"to avoid me and my children, my demons. But we are all returning now, you see—it is high time that the human race learns its place, and the angels' foolish placement of their Tesseract on this weak planet… why, never could I have imagined that I'd receive such a perfect opportunity."

"But humans are going to _fight,_" Fury tried. He was only stalling now—trying to give Coulson and Hill as much time as he possibly could. "They _will _stand against you, and I have to say, I'm pretty damn sure that they'll find a way to succeed."

"Succeed? Against me?" Lucifer laughed—a high, chilling sound. "Oh, what a sweet notion; however, I cannot help but fear you to be brutally wrong."

"Lord," Selvig spoke up. Fury glanced over, his stomach twisting at the sight of his colleague's strange golden eyes. "He's delaying us—he's trying to let the others escape, but this place is about to blow."

"So it is." Lucifer's eyes flickered upwards briefly, scoping out the half-caved ceiling, which was beginning to dissolve into cinders in a few select places. "And your fragile casing won't be able to handle the damage, will it? Very well. You will prove of use, and so we take our leave now, before you find yourself harmed. Come, now—both of you. Oh, but brother… if you could take care of the good pastor for us first."

For Fury had been leaning forward, moving towards the door in an attempt to at the very least take control of Selvig, make sure that Lucifer had no way to abduct him. Apparently, though, his attempt had not gone under the Devil's notice—Uriel, possessed by the goldenness, turned around, and then, out of seemingly nowhere, he was holding a bow—almost ghostly, as if woven of silver moonbeams, and yet far too solid—frighteningly so. It was a familiar weapon to Fury, one that he had seen the angel display in the past, but not one that he ever imagined to find himself stared down by.

Even knowing that Uriel's aim would be flawless, he tore himself away, wincing and trying desperately to avoid the swift path of the arrow released. However, perhaps possession had thrown the angel's aim off ever so slightly, because the dart only nicked his shoulder—enough to knock him backwards, send the Tesseract tumbling out of his hands and onto the cracked floor, but nothing more.

He drew in a deep breath, wincing against the sting, but by the time he'd heaved himself into a sitting position, Lucifer was scooping up the Tesseract with apparent painlessness, and then he seemed to walk into nothing—simply vanish; there one moment, entirely gone the next. Fury glanced over towards the staircase, but it was empty, as well—Selvig and Uriel, likewise, had disappeared.

He exhaled, coughing on smoke that was beginning to gather around the room, and stood up shakily. The cut from Uriel's arrow burned unnaturally, but he managed to ignore it, limping his way over to the stairs and dashing up them.

The entire church was in flames—brilliant orange flames, crisscrossing his path and gathering on the ceiling. For a minute, panic threatened to swamp his mind, but he pressed forwards, tracing the familiar path of soot-caked, smoke-stained hallways towards the front door and hoping, praying—praying harder than he ever had in his life—that everyone had made it out of the building safely.

It was too long before the door came into view—long enough, in fact, for the ceiling to begin crashing down behind him. Though it came from a few hallways back, the noise was deafening, swamping his senses in a blanket of harsh bangs and splintering wails. His head buzzed from the smoke, his legs beginning to shake, and it was with utter relief that he finally shoved out of the doors, shoulders trembling, lungs barely functioning under the weight of so much dark smoke.

"Father Fury!" an anxious, feminine voice sounded across the grassy lawn. He waved a hand, indicating that he was alright, and then realized who had spoken—Maria Hill, standing next to Phil Coulson on the sidewalk. Coulson had a cell phone clutched in his hand, and it was clear by the sirens wailing in the distance that he had just called the fire department.

"Did everyone make it out?" Fury demanded as soon as he reached them, coughing slightly between the words.

Coulson gave a quick nod. "Every single person. But, Father—what…"

"What the hell is happening?" Hill elaborated. Her eyes were wide, terrified-looking, and her chest heaved with elevated breaths.

"Hell, indeed," Fury muttered grimly. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat and turned back to stare upon the burning wreckage of his church once more. "You won't want to hear this, and I am sorry, but it's him—Lucifer."

Hill choked in utter disbelief, but Coulson jumped on immediately, speaking at such a rapid pace that it was a wonder he didn't trip over his own words.

"What? But that's not possible, he—that is, he can't possibly come to Earth. He's in Hell, and why would he ever choose Holy Shield, anyways, if—"

"Coulson—quiet," Fury commanded. The priest obeyed, looking away in a way that was almost ashamed. "It's because of the angels. Because of the Tesseract. Uriel came, one of our own… he explained that the thing is a damn key to Hell, and we've been housing it all this time. Lucifer used it, somehow, to come here… he took Uriel, and Selvig, too."

"Selvig is dead?" Hill questioned, her voice hushed.

He shook his head minutely. "Not dead. Possessed. Taken. I can't say for sure."

Both of the priests were finally silent, and Fury finally allowed himself to fully focus on the wreckage before him, what had become of his beloved church. Smoke was issuing for several yards into the sky beyond the burnt steeple, which was growing more and more blackened as he watched, the cross almost completely singed away. The wood was the most flammable, its subtle majesty seemingly replaced by a solid wall of hungry golden orange, and the lawn was catching, as well, innocently green blades of grass sucked into the whirling inferno of heat and light.

Slowly, gradually, the steeple began to give, tilting at a more and more precarious angle as great measure of blackened wood and siding slipped off of it, collapsing into piles of cinder. Then, all at once, it dropped, tearing itself off of the building and bursting into flames the second it hit the ground, half in the street.

"This is it," Fury voiced without a hint of doubt. Because he was sure. As much as he wished otherwise, he was utterly, completely positive of what he was seeing before him—what he had seen in the basement, in the eyes of the fallen angel. "What we've been warned about since the beginning. The Apocalypse has begun."


	2. II

**A/N** _Better feedback than I expected last chapter! Thanks, guys-if the positiveness is consistent, I'll certainly write more!_

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**II**

The basic problem was that demons were pathetic; they just seemed to have an exceptionally hard time realizing it. Even when the angels would wipe out legions of the ones who managed to creep onto Earth, they never learned their lesson—just kept returning. It wasn't that they were _stupid, _per se—on the contrary, they were highly intelligent as far as underworld beings went, and they at least managed to outwit humans ninety-nine percent of the time. But, despite some advantages, they just never came near the point where they could overcome angels—though, perhaps because of Lucifer or maybe due to the fact that they were just so stubborn, this fact seemed yet to be acknowledged from their side.

Raziel, the Secret-keeper of Heaven and an angel with far too many earthly dealings constantly on her plate, knew this far too well.

One would also think that, for all her associations with them, the stupid humans would pick up on the fact already that she vastly preferred a female vessel, and quit determinedly referring to her as masculine. It wasn't a huge deal, or at least it usually wasn't, but things grew more complicated when it reached the point of demons trying to track her down and stabbing three innocent human men to death before picking up on the fact that she was wearing a different form entirely.

They were onto her now, though.

There were three of them—all confined to vessels, probably for the purpose of disguise. The leader was the oldest, dressed in what looked like a military suit and watching her with watery, pale eyes, and the other two—younger and fitter—gazed on from the sides. She had to admit that, as it went, they'd gotten her fairly good—she was tied up in plain ropes, cinched tight around her arms and legs and chest, but they had the added benefit of being thoroughly drenched in holy oil, which stung and burned at her skin to the point where she couldn't so much as turn slightly without the threat of blinding agony. Of course, they'd still made a mistake—and that mistake was clear enough to her, even from the start: the chair. Apparently wanting to look as normal as possible, they'd tied her up to a completely ordinary, mundane wooden chair… a chair that would be far too easy to break and shear her bonds with.

She wasn't saying anything yet, though. She was interested, at least a little bit, in what this particular group of demons had to say to her, what they had against her. Sometimes those who managed to track her down didn't even have any particular feuds in mind—just wanted to cut apart every angel in their path—but these three had clearly put some thought into their capture.

"It is a shame," the first demon growled, taking a step forwards and folding his hands behind his back, "that we ended up like this."

"I have to agree. You're awful messes of creatures."

His jaw tightened, a forced, sarcastic smile twisting his thin, withered lips. "Don't pretend to miss my meaning, angel." Though the words were English, it was clear that his vessel wasn't used to communicating in such a tongue, and the words came out oddly cut—not accented, exactly, but with a ring to them that Raziel could identify as Russian with relative ease.

"Angel, you called me? How sweet."

"We know what you are!" the demon snarled, a faint golden light—that of all Hell's souls—flickering vaguely behind his eyes. She forced herself to relax, mentally repeating that she might as well not get cocky—she didn't, after all, want to advertise the fact that she was barely at all threatened by the situation. They clearly thought they had done a good job, and it was in her best interests that they remained under that impression, at least for the time being.

"Of course you do," she relented, ducking her head slightly so that the golden red waves of her hair fell before her eyes, partially blocking her vision. Her wings prickled at her back, begging for release, but she forced them to remain tucked invisibly in place—if she were to extend them now, the oil of the ropes would instantly sever them, and then she really would be in trouble. "I don't mean to underestimate you."

"Of course you don't." He snickered slightly to himself, then paced closer, tilting his chin up. At an apparently silent command, one of his younger assistants strode over to her and gripped the edge of the chair, tilting it back slightly and reaching into his pocket. Her eyes widened minutely as he removed a slim silver object that she almost immediately recognized as a lighter—the sudden panic stirring her stomach caused sweat to break out over her vessel's skin, and she clenched her teeth hard to keep her wings from reflexively springing out.

Fire. Of course they had fire—of course they weren't dumb enough to do this, to just assume that she wasn't going to be able to escape. Were they going to kill her? She couldn't die now, she couldn't afford that—too many people were depending on her. And yet if the stupid demon dared to bring the flame to the rope, it would go up—she'd be damaged beyond repair in milliseconds; nothing hurt her or any other angel like holy fire. She could break the chair, escape now—but, no, she needed this. She couldn't afford a crew of demons this intelligent on the loose—even if she killed this group, they still had a clear external motivation, and it was quite possible that another gang would follow in their place, try to achieve whatever goal they couldn't. There was too much of a chance that they'd find her again, or—worse yet—find someone else, and she wasn't cowardly enough to risk that.

"What do you want?" she demanded, her breath rasping in her throat.

"Nothing huge," the demon crooned, "only a little bit of… information. And we're quite willing to give you _smaller _burns until you're ready to tell us."

To emphasize his boss's point, the second young one paced over. In his hands was some sort of metal bottle, rusted bronze-colored and etched with intricate letters that Raziel had no trouble recognizing as Enochian, the language of the angels. He uncapped and tilted it, and even in the low amber lighting of the warehouse that they were hidden in, she could see the thin stream of oil that trickled into his waiting fingers. Then he stepped forwards, reaching out and aggressively gripping her chin. She let out a wordless noise of protest, but not before the demon managed to smear the greasy, repulsive liquid over the side of her jaw, leaving a fierce burn where it touched. Her breath hitched up, coming faster, and its rate only increased as the one holding the lighter lifted it, so that its cold metal edge tauntingly ran along her oil-slicked skin.

Well, weren't they crafty. She held back from snarling in frustration—more than anything, she wanted to release a stream of pure angelic energy, blast the demons into bits and be on her way. Sometimes, it seemed, being a designated secret-keeper was challenging—in any case, it was far more effort than it was worth to know everything she could at all times, especially when other creatures proved to be far too keen on getting it out of her.

"Now, as you'll surely understand, it will work out best for us all if you simply answer the questions we have." The elder demon ran one hand slowly over the back of the other, almost thoughtful. "Let's start simple: why are you here? On Earth?"

_I could ask you the same thing, you hypocritical, psychopathic scum. _She let her eyes lift to the ceiling, steadily breathing in the rusty scent of the warehouse, and gave herself a few seconds to think out her answer before speaking, words steady, voice measured. "I am forbidden to tell anyone."

The demon holding the lighter flicked it open and settled his thumb on the button, ready to scorch off her skin at the blink of an eye. As much as her reflexes told her to either lash out or freeze up entirely, she forced herself to keep breathing—breathing was vital, and despite all the time she'd spent in a human vessel, it was far too easy to forget that little thing.

"The thing is, it's not really our concern at this point what you're forbidden to do. You're the Secret-keeper, aren't you?"

"Yes," she confirmed, not hesitating—it wouldn't hurt her to let him know—but also not giving him her name. She wouldn't hand something that powerful over to any demon, even one whom she didn't intend to let survive the next hour.

"Perfect. Then we have plenty to learn from you. Assuming that you'll be willing to let us know everything that we need to, of course."

"Oh, naturally," she muttered under her breath, wondering just how good demons were at detecting sarcasm. These ones in particular were just awful—normally, their species was more unintelligent than anything else, but this was just absurd. They were _irritating, _and killing them would be a pleasure—seeing that lingering golden light drain from their vessels' eyes was sure to bring no small amount of satisfaction.

"Good. Since you're so willing, we will move back to the original inquiry—why are you here on Earth, angel? You do know that this is no longer your domain?"

"Isn't it?" She cocked an eyebrow. "Your master doesn't rule over this place. It's securely under God's cover."

"You tell yourself it is, yes, but the time is coming. Lucifer is ready to return, ready to fix this wreck of a planet and bring it to a new level—change chaos into beauty…" The demon's eyes shone glassily, his jaw beginning to slacken as the words poured out of his mouth. "Humans, humans are too crude for this world, for any world. They are animals. It will be a gift to them to take away their lives."

Raziel was sickened. Here it was, undoubtedly—the very worst thing about demons, the thing that led to her absolute lack of guilt every time she ended up killing one. They were genuinely monsters. And perhaps angels had been at one point, too—of course they had, in fact. God's soldiers doubted humans, as well, nearly all of them, though only one dared to stand up to his decision to craft such fragile creatures—the one that then descended to Hell, that created this demented, absurd species that stood before her now, terrifying in its primitive bloodlust. One demon—two, three, probably up to fifty or so, she could manage without much trouble. But their numbers were practically limitless. Thousands, millions, maybe more; most writhing in the flaming pits of Lucifer's damnation, but others here, on Earth. Not many—only a couple hundred in total, those who could manage to sneak through the cracks—but enough to hurt the humans. Enough to hurt an angel, if enough of them banded together.

And if Lucifer returned, with him would come more demons. Hordes of them. Enough to enslave, murder, torture the entire planet—whichever they designated the most painful, she imagined. And that, even though she wasn't going to say it to this vile creature, was one of the reasons why she was here on Earth: to combat their constant forces, to make sure that the demon problem on the planet remained nothing beyond an irritable presence, only a few humans murdered every once in a while. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best she could do—and, usually, it was enough.

"Lucifer's coming back?" she said blankly, her words dropping heavily into the air. For the first time, he had truly hit her hard—she had no idea how to respond, what she could possibly say. Lucifer couldn't be coming back—he just _couldn't. _

"Aha, so the little secret-keeper does have some things left undiscovered," he chuckled, his lips pulling away to expose teeth just slightly too sharp for his human vessel. "Good to know. Though I am sure that your knowledge will be… sufficient enough… to carry out a decent conversation with you now, yes?"

She opened her mouth to protest, but was cut off by a sudden stabbing ache at the back of her skull—for a single moment, she thought that perhaps one of the demons had gotten behind her without her notice, was causing the dull pulse that was steadily growing into agony. But then she recognized it—it was a sensation caused not by demons, but rather something else entirely, some_one _else.

_Father Fury. It's been a while. _

Raziel clenched her teeth together as hard as she could without being noticeable as the pain spread across the back of her skull, swiftly encompassing the whole of her head, so that a white fire rose up behind her eyes, obscuring the shadowy form of the demon standing across from her. Her fingers curled into her palms, nails sharp against the soft skin, and she hoped silently that the demons wouldn't notice anything wrong—she couldn't afford them detecting her communication.

_Your prayers are as incredibly overwhelming as always, _she thought-spoke dryly, trying to hold her head together, using the small remaining bit of sensation in her jaw to keep it from flying open, releasing a scream. _Is this strictly necessary at the moment? I'm in the middle of something._

_Raziel?_

She stiffened, then—physically and internally. It wasn't Fury's familiar deep, resounding tones that now echoed and rebounded off of the inside of her mind, but rather a lighter, fainter voice, one which clearly wasn't used to communicating this way.

_Who are you? Where's Fury? _

_He asked me to call for you, he—it's an honor—Lucifer—_

The words were garbled, and frustration rose up inside of her at the clear inexperience of the speaker. If something was so important, couldn't Fury have afforded to call for her himself? She didn't say anything, though, because the last audible word was pressing enough to overwhelm her irritation. _Lucifer. _If Lucifer was concerned, then the demons weren't lying or exaggerating—Nicholas Fury was a much more reliable source than any of the golden-eyed scum that plagued the planet, and she believed this man, however foolish he seemed, when he claimed his allegiance to the pastor.

If Lucifer was abound—truly—then she had better places to be.

It took a great deal of strength to force away the pressure of the prayer, but she managed to shove it down, flexing metaphysical muscles to force the light and noise out of her consciousness. Slowly, the warehouse strained back into view—the demon still speaking, apparently not having noticed her brief distraction. Her lips curled into an imperceptible smirk—they really were _dumb—_and she took a moment to abandon all of her external motivations, to simply see her situation in an entirely tactical way.

The first demon was pacing slightly, continuing to ask meaningless questions and snarl in frustration when she didn't reply to them. With every passing second, the other two demons, the ones still tilting her chair back, would grow tenser, and the lighter was now knocking repeatedly against the oil-stained side of her face, fighting for the chance to open and release its flame.

It would all be, she decided, incredibly easy.

She started by lashing out an elbow to the side, catching the lighter-bearing demon in the stomach. Her enforced muscle and bone immediately punched into him, even tearing his flesh slightly as he howled and stumbled backwards. The lighter clattered to the cement ground, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a brief second, internally preparing—this would be the hardest part.

The harsh shove of the other demon's hand on her shoulder prompted them to fly open again. She leaned forward and then back again in a sharp, half-second movement, force rippling down the legs of her chair and causing them to break on impact with the flooring. It crashed down backwards, and she kicked wildly, her foot hooking under the knees of the other younger demon and resulting in the sharp crack of shattering joints. Her mouth twisted into a grim smile, countering the pain that was arching through her legs and arms where the oil-soaked rope blazed against her exposed skin. It hurt—enough to bring tears to the eyes of her vessel, but she was good at ignoring agony, and she did so now, rolling over sideways with part of the broken chair still roped to her torso and thighs. Wincing slightly, she managed to clench a bit of fragmented wood between her teeth—it tasted dusty, disgusting, but that didn't matter right now, as she ducked down and plunged it into the thick rope looped around her arm. It was crude, primitive, but she managed to tear it apart in a few swift motions, and then her arm was free. She spat out the makeshift wooden knife and ripped the remaining ropes off with her hands. All of this was done within a couple of seconds, and she was on her feet, entirely clear of the cumbersome bonds, by the time the other two demons were struggling to stand.

"You pathetic creature!" the leader demon yelped, taking a half-step backwards.

"I'm starting to think that you really don't know what _pathetic_ means," Raziel replied smoothly, and released her wings.

They unfurled like twin massive banners of dancing shadow, branching out several feet in either direction. It felt wonderful to let them loose after being confined for so long, and she allowed them to twist and flex, catching the dim light so that amber pools formed in their dark, feathery folds. They were magnificent—purest black in the center of each individual feather's shaft, but expanding into an ever so slightly paler palette, navy blue, midnight violet, shimmering with twice the luster of the richest raven.

The demon gaped in terror, but she was already moving, half-running and half-flying forwards, so that her feet scraped only lightly on the floor and her wings flapped strongly, carrying the majority of the weight. She located the knife that he'd taken from her earlier easily enough—it was resting on a small, dusty table nearby; hardly a safe location, she thought with a contained grin. The weight of the heavy silver blade was familiar and comforting in her hand, and she whipped around with it raised high, just in time to see the two younger demons crossing closer to her once again, their eyes blazing pure gold with unrestrained fury.

It was effortless. She slit one's throat, dragging a clean cut through its skin and leaving a bronzed sheen of ichor behind as he released a shriek and folded to the ground, then plunged her knife cleanly into the chest of the other, allowing her arms to fold and bring her in close, so that she was staring him straight in the blindingly bright eyes.

"A word of advice," she breathed into his ear; "never try to light my face on fire."

Rather than wailing like his companion, the second demon died without so much as a whisper—she slipped the now blood-drenched dagger back out of him, and he teetered only slightly before collapsing onto the cold ground.

Raziel took the time to clean off her knife blade, an irresistible smirk twitching at the corners of her lips. It was stupidly self-indulgent, she knew, to be taking so long, but she couldn't resist having a bit of fun with the process, after everything that the idiotic demons had said, how frustratingly they'd behaved.

Only the third remained now—the leader, the one in the oldest vessel. He watched her with wide eyes, a scowl darkening his face, the golden light behind his pupils threatening to break into full materialization. She twirled the knife in her hand and took a couple of steps closer, wings pulsing curtains of darkness behind her.

"As for you," she murmured, disgust dripping from her words. "Do yourself a favor and send a last message to all your little telepathic coworkers. Remind them to never underestimate an angel of God."

Then her hands moved forwards with perfectly contoured smoothness, and the demon was bellowing in pain as she buried the dagger up to hilt just over his collarbone, directing it slightly downwards so that it sank deeply into his chest. She felt his vessel's body clench and spasm below her, his howl dulling to a low gurgle, then nothing.

She wrenched it out and took a deep breath, surveying her work. All three of the creatures were completely dead, lying in pools of their own blood, faces frozen in permanent expressions of shock and pain. Served the maggots right, she figured, and let herself relax again, her wings folding back into invisibility as she released the tight hold of her mind and allowed the prayer from before to sound again.

_Now, _she thought-spoke, managing to keep her physical senses intact now that she was expecting the communication. _What was it that you wanted so badly? _

_My name is Phillip Coulson, I'm a priest at Holy Shield. _There it was again, that eager little babbling. She pursed her lips and tucked her dagger into the sheath at her hip, straightening the black knee-length dress that she wore and shaking out her dark red hair as she began to stride towards the door. _And we need your help, Raziel. _

_What with? _

_Lucifer. He—he's here. _

She didn't quite allow herself to process the words, even though she'd known they were coming. As a relatively young angel—at least in comparison to some of them—she didn't remember the fall of Samael with much clarity; all she knew for sure about the Devil was that he had betrayed them all, that he was a bane and an abomination and that he'd been wanting to come back to Earth and have his revenge for millennia now.

Regardless, she wasn't one of the archangels—she'd be practically useless in fighting her brother, as pathetic against him as the demons were against her. A bothersome fly. _What does Fury want me to do about that? _

_Lucifer took Uriel. _

Something inside of her tightened, solidified, and she stopped walking, staring blankly in front of her. The words echoed more fiercely, and the carefully suspended headache suddenly returned full-force, nearly blinding her again.

Uriel.

The only other angel she'd ever allowed herself to call a friend—the one to whom she confided all her own personal beliefs and values; the secret-keeper of the secret-keeper, the only one of her brothers, perhaps, whom she knew for a fact she absolutely and undoubtedly _cared about. _

Taken by Lucifer.

_What do you need me to do? _

The gratefulness—excitement—was clear in Coulson's mental tone. _Fury told me that you have connections with other angels, he wanted you to—_

_I'm not getting Gabriel, if that's what your Pastor asked. Archangels don't have time to talk to those of us on lower levels. _She didn't bother to keep the resentment out of her tone—archangels, in her opinion, were dreadfully overrated.

_No, not Gabriel. There's another one he brought up—one who… exiled himself, I guess? He called him the… the green one, I think, though I'm not sure what… _

Coulson's babblings faded to background noise as her skin slowly froze over with ice. Of course. There was only one of her brothers that Fury could have meant—only one, and probably the last she'd ever have asked for.

Gabriel was a relative picnic, after all, next to the angel of Death.


	3. III

**III**

Fire is abundant in Purgatory. It leaks into every last corner—not raging hellfire, but lighter, paler flames, almost gently warm just to the point of a light burn. Haunting, certainly, without being tormenting. They are soft and all the more deadly for being such, reflective of neither golden good nor crimson evil, but rather the detached apathy that comes with the coldest of truths. The air is dry, perhaps why it seems to ignite so constantly, and distant howling rolls over the flat land like thunder, echoing through the shifting shades of permanent dusk. It is desert and tundra both at once, painted flat with misted detachment, and the sense that one garners from it is neither frightening nor comforting, but merely eerie, reserved without being peaceful. There are no rules in this expansive solid sea, which is what makes it such a perfect medium, the ideal hiding place for any creature, angel or demon, human or animal soul, who desires a place to hide.

Raziel knew this, and so did the rest of Heaven. God himself was fully aware. The only one who perhaps remained ignorant of the shared knowledge was Ezekiel himself.

Ezekiel, the angel of Death, one of the most primitive and powerful of their ranks, was a monster. At least, he was said to be such, tall tales and blood-thickened rumors constantly murmured between the haloed soldiers. They called him _green, _the normally natural hue darkened with their words, twisted into something acidic and demented. He was deformed. Tainted. Bestial. Something diseased and earthly next to their golden celestial extravagance. They knew not what he was, only that they were not to approach him, never to go near the shaded in-between world that he had made his home.

Raziel, being more clearheaded than Heaven's typical soldier, was wiser than to be blinded by myth. She knew Ezekiel was dangerous, but she also knew why. A horrifically violent battle with a horde of demons, many centuries ago, had torn his very angelic power apart. His grace had been shredded and altered, morphed into something a thousand times more dangerous and infinitely more uncontrollable. If the whispers were to be believed, even the emerald angel himself was incapable of harnessing its power. It would burst out sporadically from his usually even demeanor, exploding in a celestial tempest of burning malachite, devastating all those around him with its absolute concentrated force. He was, appropriately, the angel of Death and Transformation, two equally important roles in the sea of life that they presided over, and it was due to his aberrational status that both traits were now so often skewed and butchered in the world of humans. None could take over his duties, for he performed them beautifully when he could. And it was for those duties that Raziel sought him out now; if Lucifer was truly about—and to question as much, at this point, would be foolishness—then there was no greater ally they could ask for than Ezekiel.

Fury and Coulson, it would seem, had thought similarly. She was no one to defy that—she had sworn herself to the church and its occupants, and it was her job, under God's eye, to obey all that they requested of her. So it never crossed her mind, once free of her demonic captors, to go anywhere but to Purgatory.

Dimensional transition was an exhausting process, but livened as she was by her brief tussle with the underworld creatures, Raziel found herself sparking with energy, quite capable of twisting herself off of Earth, wings struck wide, and landing crouched in the hazy midst of Purgatory. It took the form, to her, of a barren canyon, lined with battered grey rock and coated in a pale wisp of shadows. Mist obscured the land beyond her, so that she could only detect the cracked ground a few meters in front of her. The scape pulsed with silence, the only real noise being a low rush of wind climbing along the ground and rustling her sensitive feathers. She hesitantly tilted her wings closer into her body, not quite closing them but holding them near enough to brush her shoulders. Tension ran through her veins, keeping her aware, on the verge of fear. It had been centuries, perhaps even millennia since she had last found herself necessitated to venture to Purgatory, and she knew that all matter of beasts lurked here, Ezekiel being only one of them. She hoped with a singeing intensity that she'd be able to find him swiftly, before any deformed monstrosities of this half-world sought her out and poisoned her mind with their wretchedness.

It wasn't quite cold, while remaining far from comfortable, and the temperature tilted lower as she began to hesitantly pace forward, holding her human form together in order to avoid any undesirable attention. Creatures as powerful as her were rarely seen in these parts, with the obvious exception of Ezekiel himself, and it was wisest to remain as low-profile as possible. The inhabitants of these parts were undecided, neither on the side of the demons nor the angels, but they could be easily swayed in either direction, and she didn't want to provide the unwilling push of intrusion, which would doubtless topple their allegiances towards the wrong side.

_Come on, come on, _she urged silently, wrapping her arms around her thin torso and flickering her gaze anxiously about. She couldn't shake the sensation that there were other eyes affixed on her, and a foggy dread was beginning to clasp the inside of her chest. She almost preferred Hell's passionate fires to the haunting apathy contained in this atmosphere—though, in all fairness, she had only been there before on a single brief mission, and didn't stay long enough to be captured or contained. She knew the look of the Devil's lair, and just barely; it was beyond her capability to imagine actual enslavement in the lowest dimension. And yet so many humans, creatures weaker than her, were constantly confined to it. It was despicable and sorrowful, but she had no say in it, and it was not her place to question the will of God.

Reality had a different definition here than it did on Earth, and so there was no precise measurement to her steps. It could have been, by human word, either a minute or a week, an inch or a mile later that she saw the spirit.

It was a young one, ragged, inhumanly emaciated. Female, she thought, but just barely—its skin was the color of sawdust, and just as dense, and its face seemed undecided as to whether or not it possessed flesh. The hollows around its eyes and lips were certainly skull-like, but it nonetheless _had _eyes and lips, though they did nothing to make it look livelier. It was a scrap, a wreck, a being befitting to no place but this, just as insubstantial and ghostly as Purgatory itself.

"Hello," Raziel greeted softly, swiftly disguising her wings with silent awareness of how threatening their slender, dark form could easily appear. "Where do you come from, old one?" For it was an old one, likely from the dawn of humanity itself. Raziel was wiser than to assume age solely from appearance—she herself was a clear contradiction of that sort of petty rule, what with her millennia of existence pulled forth into the face of a human woman perhaps in her twenties.

"Are you an angel?" The ghoulish child had a voice dry as paper, crackling like autumn leaves and heightening its resemblance to an elderly woman. It tipped its pointed chin, and its pale hair hung lankly around its face, transparent enough to reveal the scarred mess of a disfigured scalp underneath.

"I am, madam," Raziel acknowledged, bending forwards onto her knees. She lowered her head in gentle respect, ginger locks of hair streaming over her creamy cheeks. Her hands brushed against the rough stone, and its friction left iciness whispering over her palms, but she paid it no regard, instead directing her attention towards communication to the creature before her. This was a soul clearly well-traversed in the layout of Purgatory, one who, surely, knew where Ezekiel lay hiding. "I come seeking a companion of mine. His name is Ezekiel. Perchance you have heard of him?"

The spirit flickered briefly, and, for a moment, its sharp-ground teeth were chillingly visible through its worn, sallow cheeks. Raziel forced her breath and heart to continue forwards at steady rates, apparently undisturbed by the sight before her. Reassured by the angel's even attitude, the child nodded slowly, its eyes shifting rapidly between black and silver, undulating with source-less shadows.

"I need him, but I am a stranger here. Will you bring him to me, ma'am? It's for a most important purpose, I promise. You'll be doing everyone a little bit of good, yourself included."

The wisp blinked slowly, its lids not quite solid over the pale sheen of its eyes. Raziel resisted biting her lip nervously, knowing that any unsure expression was sure to alter the sprite's resolve with unwanted consequences. She maintained eye contact, steadily and carefully, for several seconds, struggling not to be unperturbed by the shapes and colors darting through the pupils across from her. They seemed just as intangible and immaterial as the creature itself, shifting rapidly between fire-red and pale gold, whipping through everything in between. It was odd in appearance, but Raziel knew better than to try and apply reason to the looks of Purgatory's residents.

"Please," Raziel repeated, trying to keep her tone as light as possible. Her word elicited another quick blink, and then, before she so much as had time to coach her lungs into steadiness, the creature twisted and curled in on itself, collapsing to the ground before vanishing entirely like a column of dust lifted by the wind. Raziel stared blankly after it with her lips parted, heart hammering freely against her ribs now that she no longer had to feign tranquility. She had no idea whether her request had been followed or if she had been abandoned, but there was truly nothing to do about the matter. Moving on would be idiotic, when she still had a chance of being returned to, so she didn't stand, only slightly adjusted her position on the dry ground to allow a bit more comfort. Her wings shuddered and caressed her shoulders, reassuring in their volume and softness. They were still rather stiff from being bound by the demons, and she took advantage of the respite from traveling to extend them slowly, flexing their delicate muscles and accepting the cool whoosh of air that breathed between the feathers' fine shafts. Wings were high-maintenance appendages, more so than they were ever given credit for, and despite the way that they were famed for belonging to magnificently powerful creatures, they really weren't the best in terms of endurance. Once she got ahold of Ezekiel, she thought, she'd ask them to give her a bit of time off, just to make sure that her wings weren't overly taxed, before launching into the apocalyptic battle lying ahead. Of course, there was high chance they wouldn't be able to grant her that, but she could at least hope.

Her ponderings were cut off by a flash of noise, a rushed shuffle of what sounded like tiny feet on the barren stone. A glance up revealed it to be just that, indeed—standing hunched before her, and apparently brighter for her exertion, was the spirit from before, this time with a ghost of color whispering behind her pale cheeks. Raziel opened her mouth, ready to question the creature's doings, when a heavy shadow fell over them both, blocking out even the watery light that did manage to beat against their backs in this pale plane.

She glanced up, and her parted lips pressed swiftly together, solemn with wordless awe at the sight before her. The fact that she had existed before Ezekiel's fall didn't mean that she had ever associated with him; he was ranked far above her in the order of angels, death being a much heavier sin than secrets, and it would have been an honor to ever meet him face to face.

Now, there was no doubt that he was _remarkable. _

For it was him. It must have been. He wasn't particularly tall, but held darkness condensed even in his subdued being; like her, he was in human form, his eyes cast down and his chin lowered, heavy hands wound nervously. Dark, slightly silvered curls hung over his worn forehead, and his features were in unnatural shadow, so that she could only make out a glint of dark eyes and the shape of a scowl. Shadows seemed tangible around him, pressing in on his back and shoulders, almost echoing the wings that were currently invisible. This was a relief, despite the sinister air of their absence—she knew that their appearance, along with a green glow in his eyes, would signal the approach of his savage power, a takeover from his demented dark side.

The eruption of ragged feathers seemed far from approaching, though. He was calm, and that calmness remained resonant in his voice as he spoke, his words parceled out carefully and evenly. "Raziel," he greeted, the few syllables thick with almost sardonic bitterness. "It has been a long time, young one."

"You don't know me," she replied, her bone marrow prickling with surprise from the sound of her own name in the foreign voice. "You never knew me."

"Oh, but I knew _of _you, of course. You were one of His favorites, you know. Very admirable, very devoted to your duty. Never led astray by such things as... well, let's just say... nothing that led to any _deformities _on the part of your powers." The accentuated word, already held tenderly in his low voice, was delivered additional emphasis by a low quake of thunder sighing over the barren landscape. Raziel glanced up, eyes wide, in time to make out an emerald shudder pulsing through the otherwise colorless sky. Her hands curled, nails cutting into the softness of her palms, and Ezekiel's barely-visible mouth curled into a humorless smirk.

"Don't worry, it does that sometimes. Weather doesn't exist, down here... the skies do what they want. Everyone does what they want, in fact. Even your little messenger—it would appear that she hightailed."

Frowning, Raziel glanced down to see that the wisp had indeed vanished, leaving not a single scrap of transparent hair in its wake. She exhaled slightly, torn between frustration and relief—she hadn't even gotten the chance to thank the poor little thing, and now it was gone, melted once more into its endless centuries of frozen nothingness.

"I wouldn't worry, if I were you." Ezekiel's words drew her stare back up, and it was to see that some of his shadows had receded, leaving him with the appearance, more or less, of a quiet, middle-aged human man. "They do best on their own, the souls do. Even the most damaged ones rarely want my help."

"Do you often try to help them?" She wasn't meant to be asking questions, but she couldn't help but be curious when confronted with such an intricate enigma. She had expected the angel of Death to be either a complete wreck, portraying the very notion he represented, or else massive and threatening, but this docile being was caught somewhere in between, cautious without being worn. There was still a subtle strength in his posture, and she knew without a doubt that his self-inflicted exile certainly hadn't resulted in any sort of weakness.

"Occasionally."

"Good—good, because we need your help now." Swiftly, she roped the subject back around to her original intent, lifting her chin to emphasize the serious path of her words. "All of us. Angels and men."

"I'm not going to be able to join in your little demon-hunting troops, I'm afraid. It's best for me to stay away from any sort of pressure, I've learned."

She was careful not to show just how much his dismissive tone aggravated her. She couldn't afford frustration, not when she was already likely to be at a low standing in his mind, and when she needed to earn his trust and confidence so desperately. "This hardly seems the place for avoiding pressure," she pointed out quietly, raising her eyebrows as she scoped out their wavering surroundings once more.

"Oh, you'd be surprised, young one. This place may seem like a wilderness—and that's what it is, of course. Heaven and Hell are never at peace, not really. They're constantly wound up in each other, testing the extent of one another's flames... striving to be the more powerful, the more grandiose. They're yet to learn that power itself is the opposite of peace. Do you see? It's in places like this, detached, overlooked, that one can find true solace. Yes, the souls starve and tear each other apart—constantly. But every feud is personal. There are no grudges. Each creature fends for itself, and I find that rather comforting. I am responsible for no one here, just as no one is responsible for me. Is it not clear how this way is better?"

"Better, maybe," she murmured, buying time as her mind, cultured so carefully to the opposite, attempted to comprehend the wisdom that he had expressed so simply and eloquently. "But it is not our way. We are fighters, Ezekiel. All of us were made and raised to be fighters, and we cannot flee from that designation now, not when we need strength in our ranks more surely than ever. Not when we are finally confronted with the very bane that has threatened us in its concept for so long."

"Surely you don't speak of Lucifer?" Ezekiel's eyes took on a heavier shade, and his voice lowered in kind, seeming to sharpen the air around him, shifting from gentle velvet to scorched iron. Raziel's breath caught in her throat, but she remained calm, not daring to break her close contact with him. She was walking on a virtual tightrope, and, now, she had no wings to catch her. For the first time, she found herself frustrated that Fury had assigned this task to her—quite possibly, as she realized now, more due to her unimportance than her competence. Ezekiel was _dangerous, _and Fury surely aware of that, to the point where he wouldn't dare to risk one of their more valuable soldiers on what would surely be a futile mission.

Fine, then. She would prove him misjudged, and perhaps flaunt her own capability just a bit in the process.

"I do. Lucifer is back—returned mere hours ago." She kept her words as measured and vital as possible, attempting to convey their absolute importance solely in the force of her still-soft voice. "He has destroyed one of our churches—"

"Not hours ago. Time is not a factor here," he reminded her, in an almost mentor-like manner. "The distance from its occurrence on Earth has no significance where you are now."

It seemed to be a rather unnecessary comment, and she felt her eyebrows clenching in confused frustration, but forced her features to smooth moments later, unwilling to let herself be overtaken when she was so determined to stay calm. "Regardless, his actions are still horrific. He has destroyed one of our churches," she continued, "and threatened the whole of the human race. Surely one as... _caring _to men as yourself must feel even the slightest pull of compassion."

"Caring to men," he echoed thoughtfully, and his fingers ran over one another in an almost nervous gesture. "Perhaps you shouldn't make unfounded assumptions about me."

"Just because I never met you face to face doesn't mean I hadn't heard all matter of your doings." They're going back and forth now, both equally on edge and neither willing to give in. "You're known for being particularly caring, in fact. There's no use in denying it. You have neither reason nor excuse to leave us now, not when your absence is so sorely missed."

"But I have all the reason, young one. Can you not see the astounding clearness of my situation? I'm a damned creature, Raziel. I am a danger to all those around me, and I certainly can't afford to spread that disease into the world of men. No, I am safe here... I need this safety. Not only for myself, but for the humans, and the demons, and for you and the rest of your kind, little angel. I am not a force that can be bound to either side, and it is unwise that you treat me as such."

Somehow, his words were invigorating rather than infuriating, and she found herself more resolved than ever, going so far as to fold her arms in what could too easily be interpreted as defiance. She was slipping up, but not severely enough to cause any real harm, and perhaps a bit of edginess was just what he needed to tip him over the edge. "Without you, we will doubtless be defeated," she said simply. "We have Gabriel, we even have Michael—yes, Michael has returned," she confirmed, a burst of warm reward filling her chest at the shock bright in Ezekiel's eyes. "Much has changed in your absence. But it will all be useless—all of it—without your assistance. We need you. It's not a choice—without you, there is no doubt that we will be defeated. Lucifer is immensely powerful, and he has all of Hell at his heels. Without your assistance, Ezekiel—without you, we are sure to fall."

He watched her in silence, his features melting into surer and surer light in a change that she could only pray was indicative of positivity. There were clearly all number of thoughts and considerations flying through his mind, but he put voice to none, and she found herself breathing heavily, every feather on her still-extended wings tense. She had made her final move, and this was it—he would either agree or refuse, but there was certainly no other direction to in from this point. She couldn't continue to urge him, for the shaded quietness of before was entirely gone by now, rendering him more unremarkable but more respectable all the same. He was establishing his strength over her, in the quiet way of visual appearance, and she didn't dare to contradict it.

"You realize," he drew out slowly, "that even if I agree, _he _may refuse."

"He?" Raziel repeated, twisting the syllable cautiously under her tongue. His words struck no chord with her. "What do you mean… he?"

"My energy doesn't only lash out _physically, _dear Raziel," he offered softly, dark eyebrows rising. An unwilling chill shuddered unevenly down her spine, and she was sure that he could see the swift stiffening of her wings, the tension as they instinctively pulled in closer to her slender body. "It would seem that it's managed to garner a sort of… sentience of its own, and I've tamed the manifestations for now, but the threat is far from gone. It's under stress, as I've mentioned, that it lashes out—that the… _other _me makes an appearance."

The phrases made next to no sense in her mind—she did, however, understand the most essential part; she was playing with fire, with strange and unnatural jade fire that bended to none of the usual laws of reality and all its contents.

That did not, however, decrease their need of him. Not in the least. Every word that she had spoken before was true, and their validity remained sharp now—Ezekiel's inclusion was mandatory. They either had to risk him or play a losing game, and she wasn't keen on the latter.

"If _he _refuses," she decided delicately, "then we will deal with it when the time comes."

His resulting sigh was almost laughing, but the resignation contained in its wordless whoosh couldn't have been clearer. "Very well. You're foolish, young one, but I suppose you will learn your lesson. All in good time." Before she so much as had an instant to revel in her triumph, he reached out to grasp her hand, his own skin surprisingly warm against her own cool smoothness. "I'm sure you're well aware, as informed of my ways as you seem to be, that I am incapable of flight if I wish to keep a level head. I'll need a lift."

"Of course," she breathed, twisting her hand around to grip his forearm in turn. He smiled briefly, and she blinked back, before thrusting her wings wide and propelling them from the lingering mist of Purgatory like twin ascending stars.


	4. IV

**IV**

New York City's Seraphim Monument was a remarkable form to behold, arching far above even the city's other respectable skyscrapers in a solid blaze of glass and bronze. The remarkable feat of modern architecture had been erected quite recently considering its archaic purpose, and the more seasoned city-goers were still unused to its magnificence, to the way that it dwarfed its surroundings and rendered those on the ground as small and unremarkable as fleas. It was mighty, unbelievable, even terrifying. It was tens of stories high, a spectacle for all to behold and an immediate target for the flocks of tourists that clogged the streets of the raging metropolis. It was grand. It was breathtaking.

It was also, incidentally, the chosen residence of the archangel Gabriel.

Humans, of course, had no idea he housed there, save the Holy Shield priests with whom he would occasionally associate. Though his name was carved into the base of the monument, amidst a swarm of curvy Latin inscription, it would never cross any of their minds that the being himself had made his home in the hollow shell of the magnificent building, whiling away the hours with his dark brown gaze directed over the city below. He certainly didn't have a _small _ego, which was understandable enough, given his history and reputation, and he wasn't in the least afraid to demonstrate as much. And so rumors circled, despite Holy Shield's insistence that he keep his head down; stories of red and gold wings, of an ebony stare and a glittering grin, of heavy, source-less shadows that coalesced around the base of the massive structure. Some called the Monument haunted, while others declared it to be blessed. Neither were precisely right, as the angels and Holy Shield were aware of, but it was certainly a remarkable place either way, whether or not it was regarded with the knowledge of all that it contained.

It was outside of the Seraphim Monument that Associate Pastor Philip Coulson found himself on this particular day. Mistiness held suspended in the air, striking the glittering metallic curves into even more definite brilliance, so that they shone with a subtle glow rather than being utterly blinding. Coulson's sunglasses sat perched on his nose, and his priest's robe was switched out for a less obtrusive suit, rendering him passable in the eyes of any onlookers. He had to appear unnoticeable and uninteresting, slip beneath the notice of any potential viewers, in order to properly execute the mission that Fury had sent him here for.

He took a deep breath of the fresh foggy air, then started towards the base of the Monument. There was no clear entryway; understandable, he reflected a bit sourly, considering that it really wasn't meant to be stepped inside of. Gabriel probably did so through his own angelic powers, and Coulson's attempts to enter it himself were sure to require far more effort than the archangel released on a daily basis.

He paced carefully around the structure, extending a hand and tracing the metal. Damp with condensation as it was, he expected a chill, but the bronze instead sparked a purr of warmth through his fingers. It was the distinct signature, he recognized with a delighted shiver, of supernatural activity. Gabriel was here.

Keeping that in mind, he ducked his head briefly, lifting his other palm to settle it beside the first. His experience with Raziel had confirmed that communications via prayer weren't his strongest point, but he had no other choice in this scenario, seeing as there was clearly no other way to enter the Monument other than Gabriel's own welcoming. Fog soaked the collar of his suit, nearly dense enough to be called a drizzle, and the contrast between the heated metal and icy air caused an odd shudder in his very core, a strangeness which he hoped would heighten the intensity of his prayers rather than decrease it.

_Gabriel, _he greeted without words, bracing himself. _I have come to speak with you on behalf of the Holy Shield Church. Danger has arisen, and we need your help once more._

That seemed sufficient. He paused, awaiting any sort of response with his jaw tense. Raziel's words had been booming, overwhelming, sounded as if through a thousand shrieks rather than the lone female murmur that her vessel possessed, and he was sure that Gabriel's voice would be at least as powerful. Yet his tension remained un-shattered as the seconds crept onwards, and he felt a slight doubtful scowl creep onto his face, uncertainty filling him. The archangel was here, of that much there was no question; nothing else could cause the strange resonating warmth that purred through the metal structure. Then the only logical conclusion was that Gabriel was _ignoring _him.

Odd. Fury had mentioned the archangel's irritable tendencies, but this seemed ridiculous. Lucifer's return surely outweighed any antisocial behavior. Keeping this in mind, Coulson went so far as to actually hammer against the metal with one hand, feeling rather ridiculous and hoping that no one was watching him. He invested in a swift glance over his shoulder, attempting to ensure as much, and was nearly knocked to the ground with the blinding force of the noise that suddenly exploded from within his skull.

_And is there any particular reason that you're bothering to disturb me? _

If Raziel was thunder, than this was an absolute earthquake, hammering through him with a ferocity so intense that he couldn't help but clap his hands over his ears, an effort rendered pointless by the fact that the sound was emerging from within his brain itself. The words were layered, simultaneously trembling in a high shriek and thrumming in a scrape of a growl, and encompassing every note in-between. Coulson gasped in air, backing himself up against the Monument in an attempt to hold himself together.

_I—yes, of course there's a reason, please, I just wish to talk briefly—I'm here for Holy Shield—_

He could barely hear his own thoughts over the resonating pound that felt as though it was shaking his skull clean off his neck, but it was evidently all too easy for Gabriel.

_So you said. Holy Shield annoys me; I need a reason. _

_Lucifer is back!_

The overwhelming voice pulled away all at once and left Coulson swaying, one arm thrust out to seek purchase on the smooth surface of the metal beside him. He barely had an instant to catch his breath, however, before the warm solidity beneath him melted away, causing him to nearly fall over in surprise. He blinked, amazed as the sight before him. The bronze had receded into darkness, leaving what closer resembled the entrance to some abandoned cave than the interior of one of the most respected structures in New York City. He glanced over his shoulder briefly, and was greeted by the sight of the rest of the populace drifting by in an entirely unperturbed manner, apparently unaware of the yawning gap that had been drawn from strong metal mere feet before them.

_On with it, then, _Gabriel bellowed, and Coulson half-stumbled, half-fell into the chasm. He was swathed in darkness for only the barest instant, before the threshold was left behind and a blaze of light immediately struck through his surroundings.

He squinted in astonishment, buffeted by the whitish golden illumination even from underneath the scarce protection of his sunglasses. Despite its vividness, it was far from warm, unlike the Monument's exterior, and he found himself wrapping his arms instinctively around himself. After a few seconds passed, he managed to bring together some semblance of focus—the inside of the huge structure, he recognized immediately, was the perfect opposite of what he had been expecting. The dismal appearance of the entrance that Gabriel had forged led him to expect a dank, musty nest of a place, thick with dripping beams and frothy-toothed rats.

What he instead received was a hideout beyond befitting of an archangel. It was magnificent, full of crystal and silk, almost entirely gold and cream and resembling the paintings of Heaven that Coulson's mother always had lining their home's hallways. A much more admirable place than Holy Shield's narrow hallways, and he found himself breathless, amazed at the luxury that surrounded him. Despite the extravagance, it was vastly bare of furniture, housing only a few long tables upon which perched a variety of strange glassy instruments, giving the impression of a supernatural tinker's workshop. The room was cone-shaped like the Monument itself, but pale, gauzy drapes obscured the higher reaches, so that Coulson, tipping his head back in unadulterated wonder, was only able to observe ten or so feet into the crystalline air.

"Alright, so Lucifer's back. Speak up," a low voice commanded. It carried nothing near the tormenting resonance of Gabriel's psychic communication, but instead sounded almost normal, if a bit stern with what was presumably worry. Coulson turned, and found that the speaker was standing directly behind him, as though he'd followed him through the now-invisible doorway.

Gabriel had chosen a handsome vessel; a bit short, perhaps, not above Coulson's own height, but respectable nonetheless. He had dark hair, cropped relatively short and complemented by a neat beard, and his eyes were wide chocolate brown, easily his most prominent feature, currently narrowed under strong brows. He donned a casual suit, the white collar loose where there was no tie, and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets, bunching the fabric around them. Coulson's eyes instinctively drifted towards his shoulders, seeking wings, but he was rewarded by nothing. Of course, they'd be kept invisible when not in use, but it was a bit deflating nonetheless.

"He returned last night," Coulson began, trying to keep his voice steady. It was difficult not to fall to his knees in the presence of such a respected being, or at the very least to voice his honor at the meeting, but it would seem that Gabriel wanted facts, and Coulson was no one to deny him of what he'd made clear were his desires. "The Tesseract, our Hell key, began acting up, and it was as if... he used it, somehow, from his side. Opened a portal into this reality, and incapacitated Uriel in the process. I've contacted Raziel, and she's retrieving Ezekiel. You're the third that we've approached."

Gabriel's eyes sharpened, but he said nothing. Coulson took his silence as cue to continue, and did so, his voice beginning to shake from the pressure of the silence around them. "If he's back, and in power, then it means that the Apocalypse is coming. And if the Apocalypse is coming, then we need your help, Gabriel. We need all the angels' help."

"I seem to recall Holy Shield asking that I leave them alone," he murmured, and Coulson strained to tell whether his thoughtful tone was sarcastic as he began to pace across the marble flooring, his fingers trailing along the tiny glass structures scattered about as he reached their tables. Even those smallest movements were immensely delicate, and Coulson found himself holding his breath, unable to make his lungs work properly in the presence of such fragile power. "Apparently they found me... disagreeable, was the word? Overly aggressive, in any chance. Full of my own power. Prone to... taking control."

"None of that matters anymore," Coulson got out, unable to help but feel embarrassed, responsible for the comments that had never come from him in the first place. "This is the Apocalypse itself, sir. We really can't afford to be picky."

"Apparently not." Gabriel paused with his back still turned to Coulson, then laughed slightly, the sound low and eerily powerful despite its being an indicator of humor. "Holy Shield is at it once again, then. Lucifer... I can barely remember Lucifer; it's been ages. Very well, then." He nodded to himself, and Coulson's gut twisted at the motion, leaping and sinking both at once as Gabriel turned back to fully face him, chin up and eyes bright with enthusiastic intensity. "Where do I start?"

* * *

Pastor Fury, in the northern area of the city, was lashed far more violently by the assault of the rain. It beat down so venomously that even his heavy black coat did little to detract his power, and he found himself growling in frustration as he sloshed his way through the streets, vivid with red lights and indignantly honking cars. None of them were aware of his mission, of just how essential it was that he reach his destination.

He was headed for one of New York's largest and oldest churches, the best place he had after Holy Shield's destruction to perform the summoning that now remained as his only hope. He knew it was a foolish thing to imagine, that he might be able to retrieve the greatest of the archangels, especially since he was still recovering from his brief period of isolation; after a massively taxing demon battle some centuries ago, Michael had been frozen in metaphysical ice in an attempt to preserve what little life still endured within him. It had been successful, keeping him chained into life, but he had only recently pulled himself out of the unfeeling state, and the return of reality—hundreds of years after what he imagined, at that, immersed in a stunningly progressive culture that he had no time to adjust to—had been hugely taxing on the still-archaic angel. Yet there was no way Fury could delve into the Apocalypse without Michael at his side. He knew it was a gargantuan request, to ask for assistance, but knew equally that Earth had no chance of survival without the mightiest of the angels.

So it was that he was landed here now, fighting his way through the whips of rain and towards the marble structure of the ancient church parked in the recesses of the winding city. It was illuminated even in the late evening, golden light dancing down its cream-colored walls, and the image conveyed such soothing sanctuary that Fury found himself breathing more easily even as he ascended the steps. It would be a bit crowded, most likely, but it was a multifaceted structure, with several different rooms for various services and ceremonies; surely he'd be able to find space to isolate himself and pray properly.

Sure enough, he pushed open the massive double doors in front only to be greeted by a swarm of people. Some were clearly dressed to attend a scheduled service, while others, decked in rags, were clearly here in hope that it might offer some protection from the raging elements outside. It really was disastrous weather, Fury reflected with a glance towards the nearly floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows lining the entrance hall, currently awash in the dark air's flood, and perhaps even harbored some connection to the very Apocalypse that had landed him here. If this was only the start of Lucifer's stirrings, then they had no end of horrific tempests ahead of them.

The thought was enough to prompt him to move faster, and his dark attire and stern expression were enough cause for the people around him to part and allow him through as he made his way to the nearest narrow hallway. Once he was away from the thickest swarms of the noisy populace, he was able to detect low organ music echoing through the emptiness, presumably from one of the rooms in which a session was currently being held. It was almost eerie, though not in a way that disturbed him, and heightened the pace of his footsteps yet further, until he was practically dashing through the unfamiliar area. Small oil paintings were positioned on the narrowing walls, depicting all matter of varied Biblical scenes, images ranging from the innocence of a shepherd with his flock to a bloody battle between an expanse of demons and a single glistening angel—presumably the very one whom he was seeking out now.

It was at this final image, in fact, that he paused, his single eye narrowing. It was exquisitely done, the contours of Michael's muscular torso and long golden hair painstakingly detailed, the wavering, poisonous demons' forms seeming to reach out of the canvas and strike doubt even into his own icy, resolute heart. And yet it was not the intricacy of the art that caught him up now, but rather the legend it depicts. Surely there was no better place to pray for Michael's help than before an image of the archangel himself. Taking a deep breath and brushing a shower of light raindrops off of his heavy coat, Fury hastened into a kneeling position, bringing his hands to his forehead and forcing his eye shut as he carefully redirected his energy into prayer, a skill which he had long honed. It took mastery, and Coulson and Hill were still learning, but Fury was confident in his ability to summon the angels, as practiced as he was, and that confidence helped to boost the power of his plea as he broadcast it into the mind-space of the angels' communicative levels, his strong words echoed by the soft thrum of the organ still echoing through the empty hallway.

_Michael. It is mandated by fate that I speak with you. In the name of your father and for the good of my people, allow me the blessing of your presence. _

He needed nothing more. Instants later, a low whoosh stirred the air, and Fury's eye sprung open once more as he pulled himself to his feet, turning with a slight bow to face the fine-cut figure that had appeared behind him in the half-second space.

Michael didn't perfectly resemble the powerful feminine figure that the painting portrayed, but his form was remarkable enough regardless, even decked out as it was in the dull normality of what looked like any casual New Yorker's day clothes. His hair was cropped but still golden, a smooth swoop curving over his unmarred forehead, gem-blue eyes gazed out from beneath heavy, light-toned brows, and his mouth was soft over a firm jaw. A powerful torso narrowed to equally muscular legs; nothing obtrusive, but rather a lean sort of strength, something that would surely leave no doubt in anyone's mind that this was the vessel of the very angel that the Bible revered above all others.

"It is an honor," Fury greeted, dipping his head. Michael lifted a hand, indicating that he hold himself upright, and Fury was quick to obey, keeping his chin at a level that was steady without appearing arrogant.

"Speak swiftly," the angel implored. Unlike the others', his vessel didn't completely disguise the heavy prestige of his own natural tones. Running below the human words like an underground brook was the sonority of the archangel's true voice, humming in a similar subtlety to the organ music that still seeped through the floor and walls, and imbuing each of his murmured phrases with a heavy respectability. "You would not call without ample cause."

"I would not," Fury confirmed grimly, rather unhappy to be conveying the dark news. "We have a problem, one which you might have heard about. I can't say, as I know nothing of your whereabouts when you aren't in the association of Holy Shield."

"Naturally. I am unaware. Go on, then; what troubles your church?"

"The church is gone. Burned." He paused for a moment, watching Michael's face in the hope that it might show at least some whisper of horror or amazement at his dark news, but the steady planes don't so much as twitch. Immediately, he continues. "It was destroyed last night, with the sudden explosion of the Tesseract. Lucifer used it as a gateway—he is back on Earth, backed by all number of demons as well as the possessed support of one of our own numbers."

Michael exhaled, then, and his eyes drifted briefly shut, fine lashes settling over his cheeks. For a moment, he looked almost innocent, peaceful, but Fury wasn't fooled by the physical relaxation, and, sure enough, the angel's forehead tensed and knotted moments later, his mouth twisting downwards. "Uriel," he sighed, and, this time, loss was very vivid in the way he spoke. His pale eyes fell open again, and there was a boundless sort of sorrow encompassed in their depths. Michael, in Fury's own experience as well as all he had learned, was one of the angels that felt the strongest sense of fraternity, and that brotherly love was clearly turned on him now, tormenting him in its trembling passion.

"Yes. Lucifer overtook him instantly, poisoned him with a sort of golden glow—I've never seen anything like it."

"Of course not. I scarcely have, and I've walked this Earth for many more years than yourself." He ducked his face briefly, apparently in an attempt to regain his composure, and the sight was perhaps the most troubling thing Fury had seen since he first received news of the church's fire the previous night. He had only encountered Michael once before, over a decade earlier, but the memory that had burned through him ever since was one of imperturbable iciness; not unfriendliness, necessarily, but a cold demeanor that had to come with such utter power, the only alternative surely being to explode in the sort of raging fire that caused Lucifer to be the demented menace that he was, that had set the two of them here now. And to see that shattered—or even cracked, for Michael still remained much more stoic than any human would surely appear upon receiving news of his brother's destruction and his planet's quite nearly inevitable doom—was nothing short of terrifying "Very well. Lucifer has returned, then."

"Lucifer has returned," Fury confirmed. "I've got a priest rounding up some others, one of my best—he should have contacted Raziel and Gabriel by now, and I believe he sent Raziel to Purgatory, to retrieve Ezekiel." Michael's expression was once more unmoved, but Fury needed no visual indicator to show how amazed he clearly was at the desperate extent to which Fury had so clearly gone. "I know it's dangerous, and I know it's extreme. But it's our only hope. We need every one of you if we expect to fight this battle—"

"Of course." Michael's tone was soft, but it cut him off quite efficiently, and he lapsed into silence as the angel folded his hands behind his back and began to steadily pace before him, chin sunken nearly to his collarbone. "It is only in numbers that we have any hope at all of overcoming our fallen brother and saving Uriel. I hope... I do hope that Gabriel will be sufficiently powerful to hold some sort of dominance over the group as a whole. Though I do rather harbor a distaste for his attitudes myself, the fact remains that I am... _weakened, _and our victory necessitates his taking control of at least some of the power."

"Gabriel?" Fury echoed. "You expect him to lead?"

"Not necessarily lead, but at least work as a point for the rest to properly gather around. He's strong, bright. One of my oldest siblings, of course, and dearest, though I often despise him in a superficial sense. It's been many years... many, since I've last spoken to him. Millennia, perhaps. A reunion will be... interesting."

"And are you prepared for it?"

"I have no choice." Steadily, Michael turned to face him again. His features were sketched in solemnity, but the light raging behind the blue shade of his eyes was momentous, dark with absolute determination. "I thank you, Nicholas Fury, for bringing me news of Lucifer's return. It is time, then... time for us to gather once more. I will meet with Gabriel as swiftly as I dare, and perhaps the two of us will be capable of clipping Lucifer's power before it extends into something yet more vicious. I expect you will come with, Pastor—you are too definitely ingrained in the workings of this Apocalypse already to be able to withdraw."

"I had no intention to withdraw," Fury confirmed.

Michael did not smile, but his eyes sharpened; for an instant, the angel of the painting behind them shone through his skin like sun through stained glass, and Fury had no doubt that, in a fight for the future, he could not possibly have an ally more powerful.


	5. V

**A/N** _Well, this is the last chapter that I've written so far, and I'm glad to say that I have, in fact, been receiving the positive feedback that I hoped for! That in mind, I will most definitely continue to write the next two thirds of this story; I plan to do a chapter a week, as usual, so there shouldn't be any changes in the updates. Even though there's nothing hinging on it, though, I'd still love feedback. It inspires me a lot to know that you guys are enjoying the story!_

_Also, in answer to a couple of reviewers: yes, I do watch Supernatural! However, I don't plan to incorporate elements of that show into this story. I consider it a different universe entirely, with no relation to the Michael, Gabriel, Lucifer, and others that we know and love from Supernatural. (Though I really never can get enough of SPN!Gabriel. Damn, he's fabulous.)_

* * *

**V**

The Devil had a wicked appreciation for the grandiose. He may often be called sloppy, dirty, even careless, but those who referred to him in such a way had never seen Hell. Hell was his masterpiece, the absolute pinnacle of his achievement—the flames raged, but they raged in synchronicity, waves of gold and red and deep inky black twisting to the skies and burrowing into the cracked earth, entwining themselves with the sobs and screams of those imprisoned within them, caressing those cursed souls with the vivacious, playful sting of their ferocity, carrying the protesting bawls and moans up to the boiling charcoal sky in an endless spiral. The iron, where it was laid, strapped its withered captives together in an impenetrable way, strong and unrelenting, searing agony into whatever skin was forced to singe against its fiery metallic bite. Chains, blades, spikes, whips; none were foreign to the demons who swarmed about the fevered land, but chaos is one thing that Hell did not contain. Its near-disaster was the result of an absolute arrangement, careful planning and layout that rendered it genuinely mighty, nothing short of epic. The wasteland was orchestrated, and a single being was behind the repulsive craft.

He dwelled above the rest of them, naturally. The foot of his palace radiated crumbling burn marks, struck into the damaged earth like the furthest-reaching beams of a dark sun. And perhaps a sun was a proper comparison, for the sprawling quarters in which he dwelled were beautiful, forged of silver stone and inlaid with black diamonds that glittered for miles. Rich scarlet and gold fabrics poured down the walls within, and the Devil himself needed to do nothing more within it than merely lounge, perch in the highest tower and watch with a gleaming grin as the souls in the land below him were flayed apart.

Hell was exquisite, and Lucifer detested it.

For it had no grace. Intimidation, easily—vehemence, without question. Yet it was a blunt power. It entrapped none of the fragile brilliance with which Heaven was so struck, and that the whining human populations strived so ceaselessly to emulate. Darkness in the place of pearlescent glows, flame replacing fountains—remarkable to regard in the briefest sense, but as a prison, Hell was despicable.

There was, for instance, no music in Hell.

Whereas here—here on Earth, his second domain, and only barely less low of one than Hell—it poured from the population without cease. Some was grating, some weak, some warbling, and often enough barely worthy of the title bestowed upon it. But there were also the orchestras, the truly beautiful ones, and it was those that Lucifer so admired. The rush and sigh of strings were his favorite, and it was in those that he immersed himself now, allowing indulgence—as was his way—before the inevitable storm commenced.

He was in Germany. A respectable land, as humanity's went, with its share of elegant leaders in the past, and a certain fine appreciation for the arts. Also, incidentally, the home of one of the finest orchestras on the planet, hence his reason for being here now. It was famed, and, he thought with a smirk down at the concert hall below him, not without reason.

The building was large, white-painted and high-ceilinged, and the crowd seated within it was decked in subtle suits and shimmering dresses that portrayed lovely formality. Jewels studded the ears and throats of the women, while the men remained confined to neatly combed hair and clean-shaven jaws; both sexes gazed towards the stage before them in rapt, high-chinned attention, immersed in the flow of sound that was pressing in on the marble floor and walls around them.

Lucifer was situated on a balcony above the rest, his fingers curled around the pale, wide railing. He had neither reason nor desire to watch the performers as they delivered their art; it could reach his ears just as easily from up here, and he preferred not to situate himself in any such area where he would be required to keep his movements and expressions to a minimum. Enjoying the delicacy from above was like surveying it from his own private quarters, and it was only, he thought, what one as powerful as him deserved. His attire, besides, was slightly more flamboyant than that which the masses seemed to don—only slightly, of course; he could appreciate formality in its loosest sense. But the black suit currently shrouding his slender frame was accentuated by a thin tie of deepest emerald green; likewise, his shoulder-length black hair was tamed only into loose curling waves that framed his wretched grin like the crests of a storm-wrought ocean. He was chilling to behold, even when he did bother to tame the golden flame of his irises—and he couldn't care less to do so right now; instead, they blazed with all the fervor locked away within him.

The music hummed through his veins, empowering his already unmarred resolution, and his fingers tightened yet further on the marbled banister, until his pale knuckles strained snow-white. The delicate heart of his vessel was raring within him, seeming to jerk up and down rather than back and forth as it struggled to contain the omnipotent excitement surging within him. The blood that coursed through his veins was valuable, not to be wasted—as was that of his servant Uriel's borrowed body, and that value was what set him here now, a summoning beyond even the power of the music that had so drawn him.

He opted to commune with Uriel just then, letting his pale eyelids slip shut without loosening the cold smile from his features. The buzzing thoughts at the back of his mind dimmed briefly, parting way for the clear canal of silent communication, and he sought out the ebony glow of his imprisoned angel amidst the thousands of minds gleaming before him, latching onto him and projecting a series of commands into his thoughts.

_Your job is to stay near me. Obtain the organ once I have secured it, and take it far away from here. You are not the priority of the angels; if they seek me out—and I do hope they will, for I desire little more than a reach at that green beast of theirs—then you are not to hesitate, but rather depart with our treasure. I will then rejoin you when the time presents itself. _

He felt the briefest inkling of protest dancing around the edges of Uriel's consciousness, presumably stirred by thought of the other angels, those which he'd previously been so devoted to. They quelled themselves soon enough, however, without Lucifer's prodding, and the sensation that traveled back through their invisible threads of communication was seasoned by no hint of doubt.

_Of course, Master. _

Lucifer sighed pleasurably, his molten gold eyes drifting open once more to take in the crowd of humans before him. His angel was hidden in the side halls rather than situating himself in the open space, and so those which he regarded now were wholly unimpressive, all fragile mortals that he would have no error in crushing with a single quick heave.

Yet his mission was more specific. He needed only one of them; or, rather, the Tesseract did. For so magnitudinous of a portal as it must construct for his demons, it would require a prompt, something beyond its typical powers. Not much—a single human heart should have contained the raw force enough to boost the crystal into proper functionality. It could be easily procured from anywhere, of course—Lucifer felt no sort of remorse when slaughtering humans, for they really were little beyond the insects that they themselves crushed without hesitation—but he couldn't deny that he was fond of a little festivity, and there was, of course, the music.

Besides, this was the best way to attract attention. Through this, he would show them all. The humans, the angels... the entire planet would soon bend before his will, and however much he may have to fight to reach that point was irrelevant. He would most likely be captured by the angels by the time the night was through, but only for the better; that would near him to Ezekiel, and Ezekiel, he imagined, was all he needed to get rid of his brothers and sisters, along with that pesky church of mindless imbeciles, once and for all.

No further delay, then. Movements swift, he widened the expanse of gleaming cool marble between his hands, then cinched his shoulders, heaving one foot carefully onto the banister before him. It settled, black polish gleaming under the light of the tiered chandelier that trembled above the ballroom before him, and he didn't hesitate before following it with the other. Resultantly, he was perched upon the railing like a vulture, and soon straightened into a sleek raven, his coattails widening behind him as he regarded the still-oblivious crowd below him. His eyes traced the wide arches of the ceiling and fell soon upon the massive chandelier. It was unlit, but brilliant nonetheless, aglow with row upon row of shivering glass teardrops, each of which was swathed in a shell of pure crystalline glitter.

The music climbed to a magnificent crescendo.

Still in no great hurry, Lucifer raised his hand. His thin fingers extended, tips seeming to grasp at midair, when, in reality, they were fixated on a very specific point indeed. It took no more than a lazy cock of his wrist, and the fragile beauty was shattered.

Screams rent the air as the chandelier descended, and a few poor souls managed to throw themselves out of the way, grasping at all those around them as the previously settled rows merged into a thrashing current, a primitive sea of howling bodies. The orchestral strings broke off on so severe a note that they seemed to scream along with their players, and Lucifer allowed himself to savor the insanity briefly—though the chaotic movement was as grating here as it always was in Hell, he nonetheless felt a purring appreciation for the pain of Earth's scum, and those which the glass did reach were a particular pleasure to observe—their very chests were torn open by the deadly glittering daggers, and they fell to the ground without pause. One was pierced through the eye; another cascaded in a sea of invisible fragments, so that blood seemed to emerge unbidden from her skin, rolling off in thin sheets. The black and cream cloth of the suits and dresses interwove with the scarlet liquid and transparent missiles, stirring into a magnificent mess of the refined and the ghastly.

It was glorious, and yet it was too tempestuous, too unrefined. The knot of roiling bodies needed a leader, and that was precisely what he was here to provide.

"Silence," he breathed to himself, as if testing the word on his lips. It tasted beautiful, and he pushed his fragile human lungs to their maximum extent, bellowing, screaming, hushing their rampant wildness in the pure dominance of his abrasive tones. _"Silence!" _

In rhythm with the jarring word, he stretched and flexed the extra muscles worked into his back, those which were not contained in the previous anatomy of the man that he now inhabited. There was an itch and a satisfying surge of an ache, then his wings were unleashed.

They were perhaps not so expansive as those of his still-heavenly brothers and sisters, yet vast nonetheless, huge shuddering curtains of crow-like bleakness that brushed the walls and ceiling with little density beyond shadow. A flame of power reared in his stomach, fueled by the faces below them, which ranged from stunned to terrified, all fashioned with wide eyes and gaping mouths and pale cheeks; they bore, in fact, a striking resemblance to those lost souls who frequented his homeland. Perhaps that was all they were, really—humans, stripped to their core, resembled nothing beyond the barest scraps of their poor, quavering spirits, their first instinct to beg, and their second—upon which he now drew—to adhere.

"You will kneel before me," he declared, his voice still amplified, though the tones it took were now more graceful, velvety. "Immediately! Kneel!"

As if in a daze, the humans fell before him, some grasping the sleeves and shoulders of those nearest them and forcing them down in like turn. They collapsed like the wave of a squalling ocean, some sobbing, all shaking, and he felt his smile grow into place again, replacing that where it had been briefly overshadowed by a menacing scowl. Tame as they now were, he surveyed them almost lazily, as a scientist would admire specimens, letting himself take time with what had to be a careful selection. Of course, the weakest of hearts would surely satisfy the Tesseract's hunger, but he was keen to provide it with the best he could, hopefully resulting in the optimum performance that would be desirable for his release of his demons on this poor ruined world.

It didn't take long, even with the meticulous methods he chose to execute. His blazing eyes soon fell upon one of the youngest of the men—a healthy being, his shivering but still respectably built form quite visible under the clasp of a tight suit. Running his tongue along his lower lip, Lucifer slipped from the banister, his wings snapping wide behind him to allow him a slightly softer descent. He hit the ground with his knees bent and his fingertips gracing the cool floor, inches away from his target, and it took nothing more than the extension of one arm to reach him.

The Devil gripped the man's clean, shaking chin and lifted it slowly, the flaming gold of his own eyes peering into the desperate, limpid blue below him.

"Handsome," Lucifer mused, and the man paled even beyond his previous waxy shade, until he appeared on the verge of lightening until he was little beyond a wisp. His lips shuddered, and perhaps he would have voiced a plea, but Lucifer gave him no time—his free hand dashed forwards, and his long nails, backed by the supernatural strength that his vessel was so resonantly imbued with, tore through the suit top and carved into the skin of the human, who released a piercing shriek, as high as the cry of a baby girl, drawn from the very depths of his soul to be projected into the air in the most absolute form of pure desperation. Lucifer was undeterred—in fact, the pained howl encouraged him, and he proceeded to crush tendon and rib under his grip, plowing through the tender flesh as it heated and spurted around him. He continued to clench the man's straining jaw in one hand even as the other was drenched with hot crimson liquid. Within seconds, he managed to locate the wet, swiftly pulsating organ within the padded cavity of the man's chest, and clenched tight, tearing it free of its looping nerve bonds in another explosion of red, this which projected far enough to touch his suit front.

His victim slackened immediately, and Lucifer tossed him aside without the slightest bit of care, straightening up with his wings fully extended and his prize clutched in hand. It was a fine heart, indeed, hot and drenched, and he imagined that the Tesseract would be quite satisfied by it, indeed, most likely to end up keenly releasing the whole of his army without so much as a glimmer of protest. His job here was complete.

"Remember, humans," he resumed as though he had never been interrupted, and began to carefully pace before them, his eyes lazily cast towards their kneeling ranks to ensure that none of them dared meet his eyes. The heart remained clutched in his hand, red droplets falling from it like lazy breaths of rain, rolling across what little of the floor remained untarnished by chandelier's fragments. "You are weak. Endlessly weak. You have feared me for centuries, and you will continue to do so, for you are meant to be ruled by those like me. You are taught to fear me, and _so_ appropriately, for there is no one on this planet capable of causing near as much—"

Uriel's words suddenly ripped through his mind in a jagged snarl, alight with rapt intensity that hit him hard enough for his words to lapse into silence.

_They're here—_

The brief words were all the warning he got, and he had only the time to snap his wings out wide, spanning them to their maximum length, before the intricately carved double doors at the other end of the ballroom flew open in a heavy blast. The glaring colors of the busy nighttime street flared across the long hallway, previously colored in such minimalistic elegance, staining it with green and neon red and dirtied yellow. So intense was the flare that it took Lucifer a moment to make out the figure standing in the doorway, but once his eyes focused, his opponent was undeniable.

Golden hair topped a proud figure, hewn with heavy muscles and graced with a handsome face, currently twisted into a spiteful scowl. Blue eyes glinted even from innumerable yards away, and billowing wings of pure ivory white, spans longer than Lucifer's own, extended from each broad shoulder. His only weapon was in the form of a wide silver shield, clasped to his front with one powerful arm, and half-raised in defiance of any attack that Lucifer may immediately launch. He was in all ways a portrait of pure _good, _blunt heroism, and Lucifer utterly despised it, just as surely as he despised the brother who stood before him now.

"Michael," Lucifer snarled under his breath. "Oh, how I've missed you."

Michael did not waste any time in pretense; he did not so much as greet his fallen brother, and his sapphire eyes were likewise sealed off from any sort of sentiment that may cloud them and therefore obscure his own intentions. His wings flapped once, a mighty movement that sent a gust of wind over the heads of all the oblivious, cowering humans, and then he was in the air, shield lifted, lips drawn back from his teeth as he glared down towards Lucifer.

"Surrender now," he demanded, "and perhaps the punishment which our father chooses to inflict will not be quite so horrific. You have no place in this world."

"It pains me that you would expect me to behave in a manner so weak, brother," Lucifer returned, mocking. He heard a stir behind him, and, momentarily thrusting all of his confidence into his recently procured but certainly trustworthy servant, he tossed the cooling heart over his shoulder, still not taking his eyes off of Michael. He was rewarded a half-instant later by the undeniable wet thud of Uriel catching it, and saw Michael's stare follow what must be the arc of the organ—he could practically see the wheels turning in the mind of his elder brother, and knew that, while not being fully aware of Lucifer's own intentions, he must have come to the conclusion that the heart was vital to the core of his plans.

Immediately in response to this knowledge, Michael curled his wings, clearly prepared to launch himself through the air and retrieve the prize from Uriel. Lucifer knew that this was his cue—he had to let the essential sacrifice get away; it really would just be a hassle to kill another human at this point. So he beat his own wings in a series of brief but heavy swoops and lifted himself into the air of the high ballroom, now gusting with currents from Michael's own feather shafts as well as the wind that was pouring in from outside.

Lucifer streaked through, fingers wrapping around a golden staff as it obediently materialized between them, and raised it, bringing it down powerfully against Michael's shield. His sneer was met with a glower, and the shield twisted, unseating his own weapon in a shower of gold and silver sparks. The tussle would have been an even match any other time, perhaps even weighed in Michael's favor, but Lucifer was still ablaze with the power of a fresh kill, while Michael was injured by the death of one of those he was meant to be defending. Confidence was one of the most powerful allies that any warrior could have, and such ruled that Lucifer found himself with the upper hand. It took only a few strokes of his staff—one to knock the shield aside, the second to direct Michael to the glassy, bloodstained ground, and the third to prick his chest; not a true wound, just enough to hold him in place, suspend him from any further offensive actions.

"There, my brother," he sighed, tilting his head in careful appraisal. Michael did not meet his stare, but rather gazed hard at the ground, his shoulders steady in contrast to the trembling masses around him. "On the ground below me… where you belong, would you not agree?"

"Not in a thousand decades," Michael gasped, and any protest on Lucifer's part was cut off by a sudden flare of light from the still-parted doors. Both glanced up in astonishment, and Lucifer was so put off by the interruption that he let loose the pressure of his staff, allowing Michael to rise to his feet.

A second angel stood poised in the doorway. Dark-haired, short but strongly muscled, with fierce wide eyes and a rakish grin even in this most serious moment. Yet it was none of his mundane characteristics which struck Lucifer so unsettlingly and profoundly—rather, it was the wings.

Mighty wings, nearly the size of Michael's, though it wasn't their length that made them so utterly remarkable. When Lucifer had last set eyes on Gabriel, it was before his famed run-in with a horde of demons, before his Grace had been shredded, before he was reduced to little more than human.

Of course, Gabriel was far from human. He was an archangel, and a remarkable one, at that. The type to be entirely undeterred by such mundane losses as that of his most treasured appendages. Rather than allowing defeat to consume him, he had, it appeared, done the opposite—taken advantage of the absence, and filled the space with a craft so remarkable that it now rendered Lucifer breathless.

They were metal. Unmistakably metal, though the forge more resembled clockwork, laden with all matter of intricate gears and screws and plates, ranging from burnished gold to gleaming garnet, each feather its own engraved slip of dagger-sharp stained steel, crowded and yet somehow arching into a single beautiful craft—a _machine, _one which now worked seamlessly to beat Gabriel just a few sparse inches above the ground.

"Game over," the archangel spat.


	6. VI

**VI**

It was almost too easy, Gabriel thought. Within quick minutes, they had the whole of the human crowd under control—or objective control, in any case; a good number of them were still in near hysterics, but they wouldn't be getting themselves killed anytime soon. Lucifer came quietly—very quietly, a smirk playing around his pale lips and not so much as a growl of frustrated pain emerging from his mouth as Gabriel and Michael swiftly went about binding his wrists and shoulders with holy oil-drenched leather straps. It burned Gabriel's fingers even to briefly brush against the damp material, and he wished he couldn't imagine the pain involved in having them tied over the very tender point at which his wings emerged, but he felt no sympathy for Lucifer regardless. Unlike Michael and a few of the others, who still carried sentiments from the old days, Gabriel couldn't bring himself to sense a trace of guilt or nostalgia pertaining to his older brother. There was a sort of familial love, certainly—a very soured type, though, one almost inverted and turned to raging distaste with the burn of the years. He matched Lucifer only in his ambition. That aside, they were perfect opposites, and harbored a flawless hatred towards one another; a hatred that Gabriel had no objection to materializing in the form of a particularly swift jerk of the straps that he now wrapped around his cruel-hearted sibling's thin torso.

"Really thought that you could come back so easily? After everything?" he scoffed under his breath, fingernails digging into the pale skin of Lucifer's wrist. His brother blinked demurely, long lashes flitting briefly to obscure his wide eyes, which were whirlpools of pure, glittering gold now that he was no longer restraining himself.

"I still do," Lucifer murmured. "For a creature reliant on the movements of faith, you're... rather lacking when it comes to your own. Your own faith in my armies, that is. I have many followers. You aren't the only ones who can stay strong, achieve victory for your side. The Devil has been detested for far too long. It is time I take my proper place in the scheme of things once more."

He really did seem... _confident, _Gabriel couldn't help but think. Not in a way that was threatening, but that cold certainty lingering under the surface served to unsettle nonetheless, especially when paired with the lack of struggle he was displaying. He paused in half a crouch, still gripping Lucifer's tied wrists, and met the gleaming eyes straight on, glaring deep into them; attempted in a quick moment of suspended breath to tell whether there was a hidden agenda buried deep in the mind across from him, some separate arrangement of planned events that were still well on their way to falling into place.

"Gabriel, Michael, we need to move out." Raziel's voice—she'd come here, of course, as backup that turned out to be unneeded, and stood now with her eyes shadowed and her shoulders near sagging from their usual perfect posture, exhausted after healing the most gravely injured of the humans with the force of her holy touch. "The human emergency workers will be here soon, and we don't want to leave impressions of our own faces with a disaster like this."

"Switching vessels is always an option," Michael pointed out as Gabriel stood up and wiped off his hands, still glowering in Lucifer's direction. "It can't hurt to change skin every once in a while; it could even be beneficial. I find myself more agile the more I change out."

"Yeah, well, some of us are fond enough of our suits right now," Gabriel shot back. "She's right, let's move."

"Besides, we don't want the humans that we inhabit now to suffer for our actions," Raziel added, taking a step closer and extending one of her thin, fine-boned hands. It was clear what she wanted—drained as she was, she expected one of them to assist her, to provide the energy that would be needed to transport them to their destination.

"Holy Shield ship, right?" Gabriel clarified through a sigh, aware as Michael bent down to grasp Lucifer's hand that he would be responsible for moving them all.

"Yes. As an inter-dimensional vessel, it will be a bit more of a challenge to materialize on, but if you're careful, it won't be a problem. It should be just over America—" Michael began.

"Yeah, yeah, I got that much. I've done this stuff plenty, trust me. Right." He stretched his shoulders, pressing his lips together against the strain, then, with a nearly soundless swish of perfect gears clicking into place, he extended his wings. They curved high above him, shadowing the marble ground in clear arcs of shadow, and their weight against his back was pleasantly familiar. They were a contraption that he was rather proud of—powered by material star energy rather than holy grace, the wings that fueled him were as powerful as the universe itself, despite their external appearance of simple metals. They would power him for as long as the plane he existed in needed his survival, and he had the added benefit of never tiring out as Raziel did now, as he was never pulling on his own wavering strength. Of course, he'd probably exhausted a few star systems already with his dedication, but he at least had the moral reassurance that there were no fertile planets within their reach.

"Hold on tight, then." He secured his fingers around Michael's shoulder after making sure that his blonde brother had a firm grip on Lucifer's bonds—his jaw was tight with the pain of grasping the oil-soaked material, but Gabriel knew that he could endure. Raziel took ahold of his other hand, her thin, smooth fingers twining with his rougher ones, and he took a deep breath, letting his eyes coast shut as the blare of German sirens began to howl through the night.

"Off we go," he murmured, and launched not into the air, but rather through the thin fabric of physicality itself, his heavy metal wings shuddering with the effort of being forced out of material existence. It was only a brief snap of time—he forced them down, against the metaphysical wind, churning the four of them through blank space, with the fierce image of the Holy Shield priests' location in mind—the galley ship that the angels had provided, the massive, grace-powered boat capable of nearly every act of what a human would consider to be magic, the only proper place on the planet to imprison the Devil while they attempted to regain the Tesseract, the Hell Key, and put back all that had been wronged—

He had nearly reached the blazing spiritual glow of the ship and its occupants when he felt the tingle of the others' grasps shaken loose of his, sucked away into the vacuum of nonexistence in a massive, shuddering boom of what he could only possibly liken to a mighty snarl of storm clouds' thunder.

* * *

Lucifer felt himself broken free of Michael's grip all at once, ripping forth and tumbling back into physical reality in a whoosh of icy, night-stained breeze. The pitch night flashed by, and there was stone against him, a rough rock face that only continued as he rebounded off of it and hit a lower shelf of granite ground with force that would liquidize every bone in a normal human's body. As it was, his grace-imbued tendons shuddered but didn't snap, and he drew his jaw into a pained wince as he finally rolled to a halt, suit dirtied and ripped, light gold ichor brushing the underside of his skin as a few pale bruises formed over his thin limbs.

The fall, however, hadn't had a wholly negative impact upon his situation. After a brief moment, he realized, upon instinctively flexing his raw-rubbed wrists, that the ferocious burn of leather bonds was no longer in place. They had been torn away by the impact of rock, and, as he pulled himself into a sitting position, he brought his long-nailed fingers to the wider straps cinched around his chest, tensing his forearms in preparation to tear through the burning material, and was just on the verge of tearing when a sudden bolt of pain lanced up his spine, so sharp and sudden that it preceded the sight of its inflictor.

Lucifer flew back at the impact, colliding with the jagged side of the dark mountain again, and spat out in his fury, coughing into the whoosh of air from and around him. Light vibrated behind his eyes, and he squinted into the mass of shadows twisting below his dangling feet. A weight hooked under his forcefully lifted chin, pinning him against the craggy rock that, in turn, tore at his shoulders without freeing them of their bonds. His breath misted in the air, but he managed to see past the wavering cloud, directly at his attacker.

"Brother," Lucifer exhaled, then laughed, the sound bubbling forcefully against the hard grip of the hammer handle that was pressing against his windpipe. "Oh, Ramiel, it's been too long."

"Where is it?" the angel of thunder snarled, his breath hot against Lucifer's frosty lips.

Ramiel's eyes blazed blue in the night, set into a rough, fierce-boned face, framed by shaggy dark blonde hair that spilled to his broad shoulders. Extending from his muscular back were wings—white as Michael's, though not quite so expansive, trailing soft as cotton through the silky air. They beat silently, and Lucifer's own strained for a similar release, but he held them back, well aware that letting them free now would only result in their being immediately sliced off by the holy oil bonds.

"I'm quite sure I don't know what you're—"

_"Where is it? _You know of what I speak, brother. The Hell Key. It is invaluable—it cannot be spared—"

"You'll have to fight more than me for it." Lucifer's fingers curled against the grip of the hammer, brushing against the warm side of Ramiel's hand. "The Holy Shield church, the humans... they're a bit keen on getting their toy back, as well."

"Humans are no object to me; now, tell me the location!"

"Mm... but it's not just the humans. They have the others on their sides. Those that you've turned against, or so I've heard... Michael, Raziel, Gabriel. Abandoned them due to how they rejected me, did you not? Should I be flattered?"

"Far from it." Ramiel's wings snapped and swished, sending a sharp velvet gale in the face of Lucifer, who frowned delicately. "I mourned you, Lucifer—when you were cast out. I banished myself for my own grief. And this, that you should be so ungrateful to my loyalty now that you will not so much as expose the location of the most powerful object in our universe... perhaps they were right, if you are so selfish." His voice was growing lower and rougher, and if his clear eyes hadn't been all too visible before Lucifer, he would have guessed him to be crying. "It is for all of our good, my brother, that the Hell Key is sealed away. Our realms are not meant to merge. There will be no clear victory—the humans and demons will tear each other apart, and all will suffer."

"...Maybe suffering is not so horrid, have you ever considered that?" Lucifer gasped back. His vessel was beginning to strain with the pressure of the metal handle against his throat, and he felt a brief flash of irritation at humans' weakness, before sending another surge of grace through himself, replenishing his breath. "Perhaps... it is the tax for a better world. We are the superior race, you know that... I intend for neither humans nor demons to survive. They will wash one another out in a storm of chaos, and then there will be only angels—only us..."

"You believe that? You truly believe that—that we are above them? Brother, please, please see sense—this is important, I beg you, _listen—"_

There was a flash of red and gold, and he was gone.

Lucifer pulled in a rough lungful of air, back scraping against the craggy cliff face as he slid down once more, forcing his wings to stay tight and invisible rather than leaping into their instinctive wide position to save him from the rapid descent. Augmenting himself with further pumps of glittering grace, he managed to slow himself to a skid, just long enough to hook his fingertips around a cleft in the stone, then heaved himself up upon it, his heels pressing against the pit in the rock. It was nearly a vertical grip, and he breathed heavily, hunching himself up against the rugged flatness, fighting the wind that attempted to tear him free of it and down into the thrashing treetops that masked the ground below. He was much closer to the base of the mountain now, ichor leaking from his battered palms, and he steadied himself there, gold eyes swiftly scanning the treetops, searching for where Ramiel had been torn away to.

It didn't take long—he soon enough located the broad white wings of his brother, fluttering under the dappled cover of needle-clustered branches. And there was something else, too, another presence... _Gabriel, _he allowed; the scent of polished metal was thick in the forest air. Michael was nowhere in sight, then—the fight was just a hint more even, and he had no idea how much Ramiel's energy may have grown in his absence.

Keeping his breaths shallow and steady, Lucifer began to slide himself down the cliff once more, nails scraping and breaking against the rock. It would be interesting to see how this turned out.

* * *

Gabriel didn't think before lashing out, a bolt of raw star energy darting from his palm as he clasped it over the shoulder of the creature that had interfered with his flight. A heavy, muscular body stiffened under his, and the two of them sailed through that air, locked together, before Gabriel's wings flashed wide, cushioning his own fall just slightly while casting the other into violent collision with the floor.

He rose with a huff, his cheeks scraped from the sharp twigs that they had crashed through but healing as he moved. His quarry was hunched on the ground, golden hair spilling over broad shoulders, and, after trembling with a massive, winded cough, it stepped back to reveal a scattering of silvered droplets on the ground—unmistakably angel's blood.

Gabriel felt his wide eyes narrowing, and he took half a step back, fingers curling into his palms. "Brother...?" he began slowly, but was unable to fully form the word when a weight crashed against his breastbone, shoving him backwards into the wide trunk of a batter-barked tree, which instantly bent under his weight, springing far back. A crack rent the air, pure as the bang of thunder, and then there were sharp splinters of wood shoving up against the base of his spine—he spat out a dusting of silvered blood where he had bit his tongue and shook his head, flexing and extending his wings to make sure that each meticulously placed gear and slip of metal was still in working order.

"Oh, you'll regret that," he growled once he was sure his power hadn't been diminished in the slightest. Rising fully, he was able to focus again, his eyes honing in on a colossal silhouette posed a few meters away, feet planted against the pine needle-strewn dirt, a blocky hammer dangling from its thick fingers—the hammer, Gabriel thought with a stir of fury, was certainly what had hit him and thrown him against the tree.

"Arrogance will make you bleed!" he got out, his voice rough with hateful taunting, and he pushed his wings down hard against the dry mountain air, launching himself through the air and at the throat of the other. One hand was there in seconds, pressing against the warm, sweaty skin, while the other found his attacker's wrist, holding it in place and rendering the hammer useless. "Who do you think you are?" Gabriel demanded, his teeth tight together, glowering into the shadowed features of the long-haired man whom he now confronted.

"I am called Ramiel," was the returning rasp. "Do you not recognize me, brother?"

Gabriel's fingers loosened instinctively, though he still maintained his grip at a lesser ferocity. He blinked once, and the face in front of him seemed to rearrange himself into familiarity—of course; the narrow blue eyes, the broad forehead—"Ramiel," he growled. "The betrayer."

"He who refused to turn against his brother."

"And in that left the rest of us."

"I have seen the error of my ways, Gabriel," Ramiel sighed, the sound rugged through his battered throat. "I wish now only for forgiveness... and for the right to Lucifer, whom I believe I am entitled to have my way with."

"Nice try."

"He was responsible for my downfall, surely—"

"Your own disloyalty was the cause of your _downfall,_ Ramiel." The anger licked against Gabriel's lungs once more—he felt wrath building inside of him; sinful, Michael would scold, but, in Gabriel's mind, necessary in moderation. "Just because you feel you can come back to us now... that does not make you any less of a traitor."

Before Ramiel could voice another objection, he thrust forward, and the physically larger angel would have tripped backwards if not for the sudden, snapping release of his wings, billowing like twin white banners from his wide shoulders. He beat against his momentum, and then Gabriel was the one flying backwards, drawn in close to himself to avoid whatever mighty force his brother might bring down on him. He snarled through his teeth at the sight of the gleaming silver hammer flying around once more, straight for him—he wheeled backwards, but there would not be time to dodge—

And then, suddenly, there was something between them, something the precise tone of Ramiel's hammerhead, but wider, rounder, a disc of pure shimmering moonlight that obscured Gabriel's vision entirely. There was a crack that would easily have burst the eardrums of any normal human, and Gabriel felt his vessel's strain, drawing hard on the fiery energy that kept them intact as a shockwave blared forth from the circumference of Michael's shield, slamming against the trees and rock alike, resulting in a shower of rubble and a chorus of bird cries as well as a great, shuddering quake from the earth itself, rocking under his feet and nearly throwing him backwards.

As it all whispered to a halt, Gabriel blinked, heaving his lungs full once more as he glanced around. He, Ramiel, and Michael stood, all spaced from each other, exchanging tight glares as they stood at three points of an invisible triangle. Radiating out from them was a flat circle of utter destruction, ash against the dirt where trees, animals, and stone alike had been vaporized by the sheer power contained in the collision of the angelic weapons.

"Anger is despicable," Michael declared once the silence had impressed itself fully upon them, "and to be avoided at all costs, lest we sink to the very level of the fallen brother that we are likewise attempting to deter. We have no quarrel with you, Ramiel. You have disgraced us and our father, abandoning us as you did in protest of our entirely warranted behavior towards Lucifer, yet we will not judge you for it now. It is not our place. Help us—help us retrieve the Tesseract, and do with it what we must, and then, perhaps, our father will decide what lies in store for you."

* * *

Lucifer hadn't been expecting to escape, not truly, and perhaps that was why it wasn't as horrifically embarrassing as it could have been when Raziel retrieved him, her red eyebrows arched high when she discovered his position, flattened against the side of the cliff like a baby bird in a storm. She bound his wrists without word, ignoring his small sigh of objection, and led him to the clearing created by the seraphic conflict that Lucifer had observed from his elevated nook, where Gabriel, Michael, and Ramiel stood amidst the clutter of burned and destroyed branches and boulders. None of them quite met each other's eyes, instead maintaining a cold distance on all levels, and Lucifer felt a spark of glee within himself, though he didn't dare show it. Their anger, subtle but stirring nonetheless under the fragile surface of their vessels' skin, was valuable—he would use that anger soon, he knew, when he burst free from his docile state and finally allowed himself to do what he must, to turn them against each other in what was sure to be a beautiful mess, a clash of purity in a chaotic storm that would rock the foundations of the universe itself. He couldn't expect to destroy the angels on his own—of course he couldn't—but he would release them upon one another, and the resulting devastation would more than do his job for him, opening the way for his release of the demons and harnessing of the Earth that was rightfully his once more.

Of course, there was a trigger. An activation. It had to start with Ezekiel.

Set Ezekiel off, and he'd set it all off—the monstrosity that the angel of Death possessed deep within himself was the perfect way to begin the decimation of their ranks. He would not be able to control himself, and so the result would be glorious slaughter upon all of God's ranks.

He had to suppress a smile at the thought.

Now, however, they were all working together with despicable ease, though the tension, at least to Lucifer, is still palpable.

"Make no further attempts to escape," Michael murmured as Lucifer approached, his hands suspended in Raziel's straining grasp. "It will only result in bitter consequence for you."

"Oh, _I _was making no attempts whatsoever to... escape," Lucifer responded in an equally cool tone, lifting his chin high and allowing his features to relax, take on an expression of gentle laziness—he didn't care whether they thought he was comfortable; even if they did know his plan—and a mere demeanor wouldn't be enough to give it away, in any case—there was nothing they could do to stop it. Their own destruction was inevitable; the ranks of seraphim would eventually destroy themselves without his assistance. He was practically doing them a favor by rushing the affair along—and doing himself a favor, of course, by using it to bring forth the release of Hell's residents. "As you well know, dear brother. It was the fault of Ramiel... who you seem rather keen on forgiving now, I must say. I heard from my messengers what he did—a felony in your eyes, was it not? Such lamentable laws, that you won't even involve loyalty to family ties to be tolerated... and a poor structure of your system, too, if such rules will be broken for the shallow purpose of assistance in a task that's _just too hard for you."_

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, Devil," Michael replied, entirely unfazed. A sharp wind sailed around the mountaintop, but he didn't appear to be penetrated in the slightest by the deep chill. "You make quite a habit of breaking the Lord's laws that you can't possibly so much as comprehend them, at this point. Now, come—there is a ship to which we will now take you, and you are to accompany us without protest, as I first said, or you will suffer for it in whichever way our Father declares wisest."

"I never made an objection on that matter," Lucifer said, keeping his tone lofty, the lilt of his words approaching boredom. "Ramiel disrupted your first flight. If not for his intervention, I'm sure I would be quite secure now in whatever prison you have in mind for me."

Michael spoke no more words, but instead nodded and extended his hands, one towards Ramiel and the other Gabriel. Raziel's fingers tightened on Lucifer's, and he allowed himself the slightest whisper of a pearly dark grin, invisible as the flap of Gabriel's mechanical wings snapped them all up into cold nothingness once more.


	7. VII

**A/N** _Thanks for your patience, everybody!_

* * *

**VII**

It was, in Pastor Fury's mind, the perfect prison.

And perfect, of course, was exactly what holding the Devil necessitated. He was nothing short of the single most dreaded creature in the history of humanity; a pinnacle of pure evil, absolute terror, and though he wasn't utterly remarkable to regard in person, at least to Fury—when he wasn't battered and gleaming from his transition through the portal into Holy Shield's basement, he looked like little more than a tired, well-dressed businessman with particularly unruly hair—there was still a faint air to the way Lucifer carried himself that made Fury more than glad that they possessed the defenses they did.

He couldn't describe exactly what it was about the Devil that was so eerie, Fury decided as he took a number of slow steps around the ring of blazing holy fire in which his quarry was imprisoned. Perhaps it was the way that the eyes followed him while every other fiber of the body remained perfectly poised, like a cougar waiting to strike. The eyes were even: green, now, dulled slightly with Lucifer's brief halting of his power, but still with the faintest traces of hungry gold glinting at the corners and around the pupil, occasionally flashing into full realization if only for the space of a single one of Fury's alarmed breaths. Despite his absolute lack of emotion, there was nothing about Lucifer that conveyed placidity. On the contrary, he seemed tense, _waiting _for something that Fury couldn't possibly think of. A small smirk tilted his thin, pale lips, striking against his cheek in an erratic line that contrasted against his otherwise meticulous appearance; despite having been battered and aggressively handled, in the plane of angel travel and then on the far more substantial yet equally violent terrain of the mountain, Lucifer managed to still appear flawless, not so much as breathing heavily, and the dark circles around his gleaming eyes looking only as if they belonged there.

He looked _pleased, _almost, in that odd, wicked way of his, and it was perhaps that which disturbed Fury so deeply.

After all—it _was _the perfect prison. For mortal or seraphim, there was nothing that had been constructed with more care than this. Angel-crafted, of course, by some of the best of God's workers; none of the avenging angels whom Fury currently had working with him now, but other beings, those who directed their energies towards creation rather than destruction. The result was something that couldn't quite be explained by the physics that the human occupants of Holy Shield had been coached in. It was so wildly strange, so _impossible, _that even Fury, used to sights of angels and demons and everything in-between as he was, still had trouble looking straight towards it with his single eye.

It was a cage, truly—nothing much beyond a cage, but a brilliant cage, for its bars were hewn not of metal, but instead pure flame. Holy fire, as well, rather than the crude orange burn of Earth, so that, rather than being twisted through loops of ash and smoke, the dark-haired Devil was instead caught in a beautifully oscillating tangle of pure white light, dancing around him and churning past so swiftly that it blurred as it tumbled through the air, trailing not-quite-tangible strands of creamy brightness in its wake. There was no true substance to the fire, at least not to humans, and so Fury felt nothing at all from where he stood only a few inches away, at a position where it would be able to char his nose were it the primitive element of Earth rather than this exquisite, heavenly shine. The floor, dull as he, was also untouched, the splintered wooden boards of the angels' ship not troubled by so much as the faintest smoke wisp where the flames danced along them.

Were Lucifer to attempt to cross the sphere—Lucifer, or, for that matter, any of the angels—he would be immediately reduced to nothing. Eons of demented power and twisting resentment, of every dreaded sin compounded into a single being, and it could be vanquished with just the slightest slip-up. For it would take only a tiny lick; Gabriel, as he prepared the ring, had taken the time to inform Fury, Hill, and Coulson just how the holy fire worked. Lucifer, being an angel—albeit a darkened and fallen one—would ignite as though drenched in oil, taking mere seconds to dissolve into nothing more than a raging pearlescent pillar. It wasn't, Fury thought, an altogether unpleasant image—though, of course, he needed Lucifer if he wished to learn of the Tesseract's location; despite whatever temptation may strike him, it would be an utter waste to, say, push past the flames that would be harmless to his own skin and perhaps give Lucifer a light prod on the shoulder. Though, the less childish part of his mind butted in, even if they did have intentions to kill the Devil, that would certainly be the weakest way to go about it. Lucifer was quicker and stronger than any human, and Fury had no doubt that the fallen angel would be able to snap his neck in a thousandth of the time it would take him to push it into the fire.

So, rather than succumbing to his boyish desires for plain revenge, he remained in an even stance, his hands folded behind his back and his chin high, single eye narrowed as he regarded his imprisoned enemy. Lucifer seemed perfectly happy, tilting his head as Fury watched, then folding his arms and turning slightly from side to side as if flexing his torso. His pale fingers wrapped around his dark-clothed elbows, silvery blue veins straining against their creamy backs, and the toe of one boot drummed out an erratic pattern on the splintered floor of the ship. The more Fury watched, the more movements seemed to spring into reality—the occasional steady blink or demure twist of the half-smile; the slip of a thumb or flicker of an eyelash. Enough, some part of him reflected, to make Lucifer seem human—but he wasn't. He wasn't human at all. On the far contrary, he couldn't be more different from Fury, Coulson, Hill, and all whom they protected. Did he so desire, Lucifer would be quite capable of becoming still as stone—or stone itself, for that matter; for an angel as powerful as he, Fury knew, physical manifestation was really no matter so long as his twisted remains of a soul were still contained in some sort of living vessel at their perhaps invisible core. In fact, the small fidgets that he displayed now were quite possibly meant to convey a false representation of the humanity that he lacked; Fury, however, would not fall for it.

"Looks like you've lost this round, Satan," he mused.

A snort, and the golden-green eyes flickered up briefly, exposing, for a brief instant, a wide swath of metallic shine under the irises. "Oh, but what a crude name. Sounds like something a grandmother would say... I do expect more proper addressing from a man as devout as you, Pastor Fury. To think—I wouldn't even get a proper greeting from the one man who believes he's going to destroy me. The _one _man. I hope you are aware of your _special status, _Pastor. The others... Phillip Coulson... Maria Hill... their hope is already gone. They won't tell you, of course, or my brothers and sister, for they wish only to impress them. They intend to stay by your side until they die, Pastor, but they _will _die. Just like the rest of you. And they are very well aware of it."

"You will not be taking any of my priests," Fury replied. He fought to contain his voice into steady syllables, rather than letting it twist or escalate towards near-pleading desperation; it was mandatory that he keep his calm now. He was quite possibly the only one who would be talking to Lucifer for a very long time, until they decided upon a better way to try and extract the Tesseract's location from him. Torture was a possibility, but not one that Fury would resort to, so long as he had any say whatsoever in the proceedings of the angels who had become his own team—he had no intention to fall to Lucifer's own level. Until then, he would suffice to merely leave the Devil in its cage and pray that no further chaos occurred. "In fact, I don't think you'll be doing much of anything for a good, long while. So, get comfortable—and if you ever feel like giving us the Tesseract's information straight-out... well, I can't say we'll let you get off free for it. There are plenty other trials you've got to stand for."

"You can't _possibly _expect me to flat-out _tell you? _Why, after you know the location of the Tesseract, you'll have nothing to do but kill me, Pastor Fury. And I simply can't stand for something like that."

Fury struggled not to grind his teeth—it was very true, of course. Though he considered torture to be below his level, a humane killing was not. The Devil was a disease, and the sooner it could be wiped entirely from the face of the Earth, the better it would be for the whole of humanity, as well as angels and every other living species that existed upon or above the planet. It wouldn't be murder, but instead careful eradication. An action, in all ways, for the greater good. And Lucifer, in facing his own unshakable destiny so casually, struck an upsettingly legitimate point: after Fury and the angels knew the location of the Tesseract, there was quite simply no use for him anymore. He gained nothing whatsoever by revealing the information.

"Perhaps not. But it would speed things up for you," Fury pointed out. "Because we _will _find out where the Tesseract is. And then we'll seal every one of your demons off from Earth, permanently, and then we'll kill you, Lucifer. Once and for all."

"There," the Devil sighed through his whitened lips, and his eyelids briefly drifted shut, milky and translucent over the glittering curve of his eyes. "That's it. That's my proper name. Light-bearer..."

Fury forced himself to snort, the easy movement shaking the slow chill that was beginning to worm its way up his spine. "Of course, sunshine. It's a fine name."

"It is," Lucifer quite suddenly cut across, before Fury could so much as voice another word. "You do know, Pastor... your own name. Well, it is a rather obvious word. English, even. _Fury. _Anger. Wrath. _Sin."_

"It's not a name I was given, nor one I chose for myself," the Pastor growled. "You're not going to get anything out of squeezing my family title for every last drop of meaning."

"Nothing, perhaps, but doubt. Perhaps your parents didn't give you that name—Nicholas, instead, _victory. _Hm... weak. Overused. Nothing near the potency of _Fury. _But I'm only going off on a tangent now... the point, of course, is that nothing comes by happenstance. The Devil is seen as an evil, yes, a menace. Yet my name bears light. You, viewing yourself as the humans' savior, convey only sin in your title. Nicholas Fury. Victory of madness..."

"You're only wasting both of our time," Fury pushed out, his voice rounding towards a snarl. A soft _ha _escaped Lucifer's lips, but he relaxed from the lean that the Pastor hadn't even realized him to have sunk into, putting a more comfortable measure of space between himself and the white flames that still rippled between them, never leaving his face fully visible for more than a fragment of a breath, wreathed otherwise as it was in shuddering smoky shadows.

"I have people who need me a whole lot more than you do," Fury continued, "and it's them that I'm going to attend to now. You're not going to be able to leave here. The holy fire can burn for eternity if it needs to, so... well, I hope you get comfortable in the meantime."

"Oh, I will... I will," Lucifer chuckled to himself, but Fury wasn't there for the second repetition; in a swish of the dark coat that he had adopted once out of his pastoral robes, he exited the small room, letting a small, grateful rush of air escape from his lips as he escaped the dark confines of the closet-like space with its low beams and constant eerie illumination from that white, white fire.

He exited into a narrow hallway, in which the creaks and rumbles of the ship were much more audible than they had been inside the prison area. Battered wooden walls, slick with the slightest leafy hints of the dazzling silver-and-white paint that had once thickened them by several layers, tilted in a steeple-like angle towards his head; it rather baffled him how the crooked steepness could result in a perfectly flat floor above him, but, of course, there were a number of things about the externally mundane vessel that didn't quite fit into humanity's laws of physics.

The ship, like the cage, was a gift from the angels—not only those that Fury was working with, but rather the archangels operating high above, who had heard of their cause and chosen to contribute what they could: in this case, a mighty boat, one that the Holy Shield was free to use as they so needed. Though slightly similar in form to an ancient galley ship, it was much more remarkable: the interior hull, for one, was forged solely of substance that resembled gold and marble, and yet was harder and more resilient than diamond, with a forest of graceful, impossibly thin pillars extending towards the ceiling, which was a curving expanse of gold leaf, traced over with faint designs of wings and other indescribable shapes that seemed to twist in and out of existence as one perused them. It was towards this ballroom-like area that Fury headed now, taking other aspects of the vessel into mind for the hundredth time as he paced along—it was what seemed like miles to the central hull room from the prison area, though he always managed to make the journey in a number of minutes; nothing about the ship, including distance from one place to another, seemed definite or unshakable, though nothing save the illustrations along the ceiling appeared to move when regarded with the naked eye.

It was inter-dimensional, in Gabriel's words: it had no physical definition in the reality that Fury was used to, and it did take him some time to adjust to the feeling of traversing its hallways. There was nothing easy to detect about the change in its tangibility, per se—he felt no airsickness or nausea, and the floor was steady enough under his feet, yet there was a faintness at the very edges of his senses that would vanish just as soon as he focused upon it. Oddly enough, his mind was brought back to an optical illusion that he'd long been fascinated by as a child, before his life spiraled into a mess of angels and demons: a clean lattice of white dots and dark lines. Upon closely regarding any single part of the image, hazy black spots would swim into existence in the white spaces scattered upon the rest of it; any attempt to focus on that darkness, however, narrowed them into nonexistence. It was this comparison that continually struck him as he made his way down the corridors of what had been dubbed the Holy Shield ship, endless until the repetition was almost comforting, a solid fragment of his always-known reality to cling onto in this bizarre new plane of existence.

As he moved farther away from Lucifer, one loud step after another, an invisible weight lifted from his shoulders by degrees. Perhaps he was, after all, only imagining that strange knowledgeableness that seemed to cling to the Devil's eyes and posture. After all, this creature was _Satan; _it was his very _purpose _to unsettle, to plant lingering seeds of doubt in the minds of all the good creatures who regarded him. In fact, that could have been the whole of his intentions behind the gesture—he could very easily have wished only to put Fury on edge, thereby setting him up for some fatal mistake that would leave freedom open for Lucifer.

The more Fury considered, the more plausible it seemed. Very well, then—there was nothing to worry about, nothing whatsoever. They had successfully captured the Devil, and the only thing left to do now was discover the location of the Tesseract. To do so, his mind—returned to its typical state of cold logic—was beginning to conclude, they would first have to find Selvig and Uriel, the only two definite associates of Lucifer that he could identify the bodies of. Demons could be useful, too, of course, but Fury rather suspected that they, being entities unto themselves rather than mere extensions of the Devil's mind like the possessed human and angel, wouldn't be quite so useful in extrapolating the necessary information.

He'd tell them, then, unless they came up with anything better. Not quite yet—it was safer to make sure there was no pre-existing tension between the angels, Ramiel especially, before he threw them into any more dangerous situations—but as soon as possible. Every second that Selvig and Uriel were loose was another second closer to the demons being released, to the materialization of the Apocalypse itself upon the modern planet. Raziel would certainly be upset. She wouldn't want them to seek out Uriel—not if there was a chance of their methods resulting in harm to him, and Fury wasn't going to deny that there was. As much as he wished hard for a peaceful solution, the plain truth was that the angel could tolerate pain as it was dealt out to him, and he would probably have to, in this case.

In any case, it seemed as he stepped through the gilded double doors of the grand room that there was a good deal at present to keep the angels occupied before he moved on to talk of possibly harming Uriel or Selvig. The five stood in what was a rather unsettling silence, parted only by the soft whisper of invisible wings and the all-too-audible grind of Gabriel's massive mechanical ones, which remained open and parted astride his strong shoulders. Despite all of their still lips, their eyes were flickering between one another, and Fury was well aware that the angels were communicating—not through their crude human voices, but currents of understanding were passing amongst them all the same, eased even beyond their usual simplicity by the metaphysical plane in which they all currently resided.

Ezekiel was the first to notice Fury as he entered, and his eyes—pleasantly dark, but with the same lingering uncertainty of Lucifer's, his in green instead of gold—immediately softened from their previous intent concentration. "Welcome, Pastor," he murmured, his voice confined to nothing beyond a soft murmur that wouldn't have sounded at all out of place emerging solely from his human vessel.

"Good to see that you're all getting along," Fury noted, scanning the others as they each turned to face him. Gabriel seemed by far the most comfortable, the edges of his wings even running along the air in a soft fanning motion, while Raziel and Michael held their chins erect and kept their features cold. Ramiel appeared entirely out of place, with his rough features twisted into something close to disdain, but Fury paid him little heed; it was only natural, of course, that the long-isolated brother would take good time to adjust to his family once more.

"We're managing what is appropriate," Michael agreed. "It has taken little time to bring each other up to date on all aspects of the situation."

"Ramiel, as it turns out, has known a bit more about old Luci than he's been letting on," Gabriel cut across. Like Ezekiel, he reduced his usually pounding tones to a human drawl, and Fury felt a slight surge of gratitude run through his stomach; it was overwhelming enough to be on this bizarre ship without the additional complication of a headache. "Seems that he's been keeping tabs on him, ever the loyal brother—the good news is that it gives us more information about that nasty little Devil."

"If that's the good news, then there's presumably bad news to be had, as well," Fury noted.

Gabriel flipped up a hand in affirmation. "Bingo. Bad news is that most of the information isn't anything new, really—only the fact that lovely Luce has been responsible for a good third of the most violent and massive killings we've seen over the past few centuries. Not directly, of course, just through his demons and cronies. Incidentally, humans seem to blame just about three times as much on him... _the Devil made me do it, _right..."

"The point is," Michael interjected, his own voice low with power that shook against Fury's skull, "he is a danger, at least as big of one as we previously imagined. He is under our control now, but that means little—he can and will find a way to escape. We are racing against him and against time. We must find the Tesseract as soon as possible, and use it to seal him forever in Hell. We will find a more secure location for it until we can be sure that it will not be opened again, and then, Pastor, if you have no objection, I believe we very well might return it to your own church."

"As soon as Holy Shield is rebuilt, we'll be happy to take it," Fury agreed. _Happy _was rather objective, of course—at least a few of his priests, he knew, would want nothing to do with the glittering cube after the devastation it caused—but they were no matter. So long as the church as a whole had nothing against possessing the Tesseract, there would be no issue.

"Very well. So it shall be," Michael murmured. "Until then, I believe it would be wisest that we spread ourselves out, allow more time for thought. Raziel, perhaps it would be best if you were to watch Lucifer's movements; we don't want him engaging in even the tiniest activity without our knowledge. He may still have ways of contacting his demons, or at least Uriel and Selvig."

Fury expected Raziel to tense at the mention of Uriel's name, but she stayed perfectly still, only dipping her chin in a quick nod. In a flash of thin, dark wings, she was gone, leaving behind only a faint scent of what Fury couldn't help but liken to burned orange peels, and Michael nodded to himself, as well, apparently satisfied with his soldier's actions.

"Good. The rest, engage in what you will. I believe that Ezekiel has a particular proficiency in locating material objects... it should take little effort to trace the Tesseract, is that so, brother?"

"Quite."

"And Gabriel, you can guide him on the workings of the ship?"

"Oh, I'm happy to." Gabriel flashed a half-grin in Ezekiel's direction. "It's been a long time." The darker angel glanced towards the ground, but a pale smile of his own flickered among the shadows that seemed to constantly coalesce near his lips.

"Very well, then, there is no time to be wasted," Michael declared. He tilted his forehead back, sky-colored eyes briefly regarding the subtle shift of the paintings etched high above them. His gaze was flat—unlike his voice, intentionally masking the depth of knowledge and emotion beneath—yet it was easy to see, even to a human such as Fury, that the archangel was housing great turmoil. "Each of you, to your duties. Ramiel, come with me—we do still have much catching up to do, and there is a good deal about your whereabouts that I still must learn if I wish to clear your name in the eyes of our Father."

"Of course," Ramiel acknowledged, thunder pulsating through the words.

And, without so much as another acknowledgement of their duties, there was a flash and the angels were gone—all at once, evaporating in a single brief twist of multifaceted light, and Pastor Nicholas Fury was left in the massive, glorious room in complete solitude, abandoned with only the contemplation of Lucifer's cutting words to keep him company.


	8. VIII

**A/N** _It admittedly gets a bit awkward when I ship a few Avengers pairs really hard, then realize I've made them all siblings. Hmmm.__  
_

* * *

**VIII**

Pastor Phillip Coulson wasn't entirely sure what he was meant to be doing. It was absolutely brilliant, of course, to be in a ship as grand as this one—to not only speak and sing of angels, but actually be in the presence of one, of _six, _seraphim. He actually could not quite process the fact that he was going through such an utterly surreal experience, and had to take several moments between each burst of action to find a place in which he could lean back, close his eyes and breathe and process everything that was crashing down on him at once.

One could say that he was honored. It was something _close _to honor, in any case—perhaps a little more than that. It had been enough to merely communicate with Raziel, and then to find Gabriel; no, both were overwhelming, practically worked his heart into overdrive. Utterly amazing to go through, yes, but also overwhelming. Though he had believed in the angels for as long as he could remember, it was a reserved sort of faith, something that he never believed would come into daily life, even after his registration at Holy Shield, a church which turned out to be quite far from ordinary.

Far from ordinary. Well, the exact opposite of ordinary. Violently abnormal.

It was in one of these moments of reclusion that Coulson found himself now, leaning against the splintered wall of one of the massive ship's distant hallways and running his hands obsessively over his shirtfront. At Fury's commands, he had reluctantly changed out of his pastoral robes, instead donning a loose, informal shirt that he had already managed to coat with dust and dirt. He rather wished for the soft comfort of the heavy fabrics that he was adjusted to while working, but he wouldn't disobey his superiors, and he certainly didn't want the angels to think that he was _overenthusiastic. _Well—he did hope to express enthusiasm, of course, but not pining, not... well, would that be better? Should he absolutely kneel before them? Was that the polite way to be doing this all? Should he—but, no, groveling would only look pathetic. He was their servant, not their pet. He... well...

"Pastor Coulson," a deep voice greeted.

"Ah—" Coulson's feet slipped on the very solid ground, and he found himself flailing slightly in an attempt to stay up straight, turning and looking up both at once with an expression caught between delight and terror: the result was wide eyes and parted lips, one hand grasping at the wall while the other caught the front of his shirt in an attempt to remain steady. "Ramiel! Or—sir, that is, your grace, um—"

Ramiel, standing tall with his hands and wings each folded, strong jaw high, paid no heed to Coulson's uncertain mumbling. "How aware are you of our current plans?"

"Uh, well, I haven't been... hearing much. That's Fury's job, I believe." _Focus, Phil. Focus and you'll do much better. Don't strain yourself, though. Breathe, how about that? Just breathe. Alright, that's too much breathing. At least it's not Michael. There you go, keep talking. How does Maria stay so cool? He's staring at you. Keep talking. What did he ask? _"That is, I know we have Lucifer, and that we need to know where the Tesseract is. But whether we want to... to torture him, or..."

"Not torture, no. Fury is very set against torture, and I likewise agree that it would be far too extreme."

Coulson found his eyebrows lifting, cutting into a forehead layered with nervous perspiration. He did wish that he could be as calm as Maria or Fury, both of whom seemed practically normal in the face of the angels, as though they weren't dealing with centuries-old phenomena, personifications of power and holiness—but, no, he couldn't start thinking about just how much was contained in the shell of the blonde man across from him, or he'd become overwhelmed once more. "Right, because... you still consider him your brother, right? That's why you were—" —Exiled. But he shouldn't have been talking like that, that was arrogant; he had no place in Ramiel's own affairs with the rest of his family. It was only Coulson's position to learn, and to respect above all. He had no right to scorn Ramiel for his choices, and he didn't, but it would be all too easy to convey the wrong impression, especially when he was this nervous already. "Well, anyways, yes. I agree. That torture is too extreme."

"Do you?"

"Oh, certainly. He's still human, after all. Well—he's not human, of course he's not. That was a figure of speech. A poorly used one. I'm sorry."

"...Very well." Ramiel sighed, and his pale blue eyes flickered briefly to the worn ceiling of the hallway before drifting back towards the floorboards. Coulson took a slow breath. Despite the power that radiated from every fiber of his holy being, there was something about Ramiel that seemed... _tired, _and he could almost sympathize. Of course it would be overwhelming for any being, surely—though he would never presume to know anything about the workings of the angels' consciousness, and perhaps he really shouldn't have been thinking anything like this in the first place—but the fact remained that, fundamentally, Ramiel was being thrust back into the center of a family that he disagreed with on a number of levels, for the purpose of capturing and perhaps hurting a brother whom he was still sure to love.

"I'm... sorry," Coulson found himself mumbling.

"Excuse me?"

If Coulson had not trained himself expressly out of using curse words, his mind would have been flooded with expletives. "Oh, nothing. It just must be very tiring, I'd think, to have to deal with... all of this, all of a sudden. After so many years of seclusion... I don't know, though, I'm nowhere to judge."

Ramiel shook his head. "It is not judging. You speak the truth, Pastor. It is a challenge for me, as it would be for anyone. Perhaps that is why I sought you out. You seem the least tense of all those on board."

_The least tense. _Coulson had to bite the edge of his tongue to stop himself from commenting on just how wrong Ramiel really was; he couldn't possibly critique the angel's observations, after all. And yet Ramiel was _wrong. _If a single being on the ship was more stressed than Coulson was, he was amazed that they hadn't gone into some sort of panicked shock at this point.

"You don't believe me," Ramiel noted.

"Well, I—"

"You miss my meaning, Pastor. You are certainly afraid. Of many things. Of us, perhaps? Of Lucifer. Yet you do not hide it, from us or from yourself. That is very brave of you, Phillip Coulson. You will go far in that way. I do believe that many of us could learn from the way you behave."

"Learn—you? No, no, I'm sure that—not to—"

His desperately modest words fell on empty, dusted air; Ramiel was gone.

* * *

"Raziel."

Lucifer sighed the name through unmoving lips, his golden eyes hidden beneath thin, milky lids. A slow smirk wandered up the corner of his mouth as the last syllable dissipated from his tongue, lingering in the air for several instants beyond when his voice faded. He knew that she heard, and equally that she wasn't surprised. His sister was smart. She knew that even she couldn't enter the room without his being aware.

"Lucifer," she replied. Her tone was more of a shove than a caress; she had no mind to savor the moment. She was probably displeased that he was here at all, though he was nowhere near foolish enough to believe that such was due to her actually caring about him. She wished that it was all over. And the reason for that desperation, to him, couldn't be clearer.

Perhaps she knew he was aware, just as she had been conscious of the way he detected her. He wouldn't be surprised. As two of the most acutely intelligent of all of the angels' ranks, the siblings had an odd connection, regardless of the fact that she had been little beyond a child when he was first cast down. He remembered her, respected her for the mighty being that she was. And somewhere, deep inside, buried beneath all the bitter notions that their other brothers and sisters had fed her, she felt the same way towards him.

"I didn't think you would come," he commented honestly, still not opening his eyes to look at her. She was doubtlessly staring at him, or at least what she could glimpse behind the walls of shifting fire, but he felt no self-consciousness. There was nothing that she could possibly garner from his appearance alone. "What on or below Earth could have summoned you to me now?"

"I want to talk."

"About?"

"About Uriel."

The breath that he did not need escaped him in a low sigh, rippling with the smoothest of dark giggles. _Uriel. _Oh, but of course it would be Uriel. Slowly, he let his eyelids lift, lashes hanging low over green and gold stained irises as he regarded Raziel. She was stiff, still strictly confined to her vessel, with even her wings tucked into invisibility and her weak, pale human chin held high in an attempt at strength.

"You're concerned about your brother," Lucifer chuckled, watching her eyes for any sort of response. They remained hard, well aware that they were his fixation, but he noticed other barely perceptible giveaways: the faintest quiver of her lips, a hot breath pulsing in her throat. "You still care about one of them, at least."

"Hardly. It isn't an unreasonable care. I owe him for several things... he helped me achieve the power that I possess today. It would be weak of me not to utilize that in order to help him."

"Yet your current actions require the utilization of no power whatsoever. Instead, you resort to petty bargaining. Oh, Raziel... it is a shame, don't you think?"

"It is not a shame at all," she contradicted. To her credit, he noted, she was remaining incredibly calm, her red hair not so much as swaying around her pale cheeks: a sign that she was managing to hold her vessel in perfect steadiness. She really was dedicated to this, then; not just performing such an action out of obligation. She really did believe that her position was to save Uriel—to save him from a menace that she wasn't even aware of. Raziel had no idea of just how much pain Uriel was in, just how agonizing it was to be trapped within one's own mind and soul, twisted and distorted into a creature of repulsion, of constant, unending internal conflict, of pure, primitive _pain... _

"Perhaps not. In any case, it is a futile effort. I can do nothing for you. I owe you neither information about Uriel, nor a confirmation of his well-being. For all you know, he may be dead."

He threw the words like arrows over his shoulder, not bothering with the bow of an acid tone, knowing quite well that the truth would hurt her no matter the way he pronounced it. She took a sharp breath—perfect, then; he had actually managed to penetrate the perfect stillness of her vessel. Admirable on his part.

"He will not," she protests. "You can still use him. You wouldn't waste an angel."

"Oh, no, but I'm sure he would prefer nonexistence at this point, darling. What he's experiencing now, it is worse than Hell... and I can promise that is quite literal, as I've spent a good deal of my years in the place." He tilted his head to regard her more fully, savor the desperate half-terror that was beginning to clasp her features. "Of course, I may kill him eventually... but you have just provided a manner in which I might enjoy myself all the more thoroughly beforehand. You see, I can use _you _first, Raziel. I can take him, take his mind, and implant within it the brutal desire to kill you. To rip you apart, to scorch your eyeballs out with holy fire, to lattice your pretty pale skin with iron, to choke and drown you in oil... to set you aflame, and only then, as he watches you burn, will I allow him to wake fully, to be aware of what he has created. He will hear your screams as you blaze into ash, sweet sister, and then... then, as he tears his throat open with the volume of his own sobs... only then will I allow him to die. To find peace... though angels don't at all, do they? There is no return to Heaven. Instead, he will no longer exist. He will be forced out of reality and into nothing. He will vanish like a shadow under the sun, and then, maybe then, your _debt _will be repaid. Just how does that sound, then, my sister?"

A gasp flew from her lips like blood from a stab wound, and her shoulders jerked once, trembling fingers rising to move over her jaw, trace her cheekbone as if eradicating from it the all-too-human liquid that Lucifer knew she could never release. "You're... you truly are an abomination," she breathed, words muffled through the tangle of her shaking hands. Her eyes fixated on the ground rather than on him, and he felt a grin tickle his own still lips.

"An abomination? Me? Oh, but I am not the monster of us all. You know who that is... you know very well who that is. Only one of us is anywhere near an _abomination, _Raziel, and that someone is not myself."

She took another breath, this one steadier, and her shoulders flickered once more, as if rearranging the wings that he could sense only on the edge of his perception. Then, slowly, she lifted her head more fully, red locks falling away to expose an expression of almost bored neutrality.

Lucifer felt his vessel's stomach jerk.

"Ezekiel," Raziel noted. "You think that you can use Ezekiel against us."

"Whatever would compel you to believe something like that?" Lucifer spat, desperation climbing in his tone despite his continuous attempts at coolness. There was nothing to be done, though; he had, surely enough, revealed himself, and she knew it quite well. Barred by the leaping tongues of golden flame, Lucifer was restrained to little beyond an infuriated hiss as his sister turned on her heel and snapped out of visible existence.

* * *

Ezekiel himself was in a room tucked into the higher reaches of the ship, one humming with a number of gilded instruments, some of them even constructed by his companion: Gabriel, who stood at his side, massive wings finally sheathed so as not to disrupt any of the delicate machines that surrounded them. The two were oblivious to their sister's doings however far below them, choosing instead to fixate on what they needed to: attempting to detect the location of the Tesseract.

"It really is tricky," Gabriel mused, running his fingers over a fragile craft that rather resembled a bronze weathervane. "It's a very unique substance, but there are plenty of unique substances out there..." The thin beam of the vane began to circle slowly, almost lazily, despite the fact that his hand wasn't making a single movement. "We can't search for the material itself, as we aren't aware of what it exactly consists of. Yet it's also unwise to conduct a scan for all unknown elements, because that... that will lead to billions of results, even on this planet alone. It's almost annoying, how many phenomena and freaks of nature there are floating around out there."

"Mm." Ezekiel had his eyes trained on a large disc of glittering glass-like substance, rainbows dancing around its golden rim. Gabriel's own gaze shifted over to his partner's, and a wry smile curled his lips.

"Right, _freak of nature. _Sensitive subject."

"Hardly... what I am is nothing near natural."

"On the contrary"—apparently growing impatient, he snapped up the vane between two of his fingers and cast it into a twirling motion that it somehow maintained, its tip cutting a sharp glinting path through the still air of the machine room—"just about everything is natural, when you get down to it. There's no force at the root of anything _but _nature. Well, and Dad, but they're pretty much the same."

Whatever response Ezekiel might have had was cut off by the entrance of Fury, who stepped into the room with no hesitation, his long black coat snapping and rippling behind him. "Any progress?" he inquired. Before the wide wooden door could creak shut, he was followed by Ramiel and Raziel, both of their faces fixed into expressions of deliberation, presumably over the same subject. In Gabriel's opinion, it really was a lot of fuss—yes, of course Lucifer was a big deal, but they did have him captured now, and if they could find the Tesseract themselves, they wouldn't even need him to release its information. They _could _find it, too—it might take a while, perhaps a couple of decades, but there was nothing to stop the fire burning. Humans were hopelessly impatient. Humans and Ramiel and his sister.

"Not much," Gabriel opted to speak up when Ezekiel remained silent, gazing curiously at his own expression in the glass, the reflected shine of acid green that he hadn't thought to be visible in his eyes. "We've narrowed its location down to the billions, if that helps."

Raziel exhaled heavily, her lashes drifting down momentarily to obscure her gaze. There was, Gabriel noticed, something taxing her—something beyond the usual flicker of tension that he had grown used to being present on his little sister. She was being strained, somehow; whatever it was quite possibly related to Lucifer, but he couldn't identify what that thing could possibly be. She was at least as clear-minded as him, and surely would be perfectly aware that they were in no immediate danger—unless, of course, she knew something that they didn't, but that was highly unlikely.

"It doesn't help," Fury growled unnecessarily. He took a pace closer to Ezekiel and narrowed his single eye towards the looking glass, as though he could possibly understand the complex twinings of light and shadow that danced about its crystal curve. "We need results."

"We're trying to get results." Despite himself, Gabriel was beginning to feel annoyed—more than annoyed, in fact. Fury had no right to be so arrogant, especially when he was doing nothing beyond commanding the angels, shoving them to one place or another. If he wanted results, perhaps he ought to try at them himself—Gabriel wasn't particularly bothered by the idea that it would take several of Fury's lifespans for him to so much as understand the complexities of the instruments they were using, much less utilize them.

"Perhaps you should try harder, then."

"Try harder so that you can let us down?"

The new voice, rich with the angelic power that the other tried so hard to suppress, broke through the uneasy pause like an axe, and the five other occupants of the room turned to see Michael standing precisely in the middle of it, golden head high, a stack of stapled documents clutched between his fingers.

"Would you like to explain this?" he inquired sharply, and the piercing direction of his azure gaze wasn't needed to communicate that he was speaking to Fury. The pastor, in fact, wasted no time in pretending that he wasn't aware of what was confronting him—quite to the contrary, he released a long sigh and lowered his head, a tension that Gabriel hadn't even noticed seeping slowly from his shoulders.

"We hardly plan to _let you down," _he began.

"Wait—slow down," Gabriel commanded, and, despite his best efforts, a hint of his true power leaked into his voice, giving it a shadow of its natural resonance that he knew would begin to throb against Fury's skull. "What are those?"

Rather than bothering with a spoken response, Michael delivered the information directly into Gabriel's mind—and those of the rest, as well, judging by the widening eyes and tensing lips that the ring of angels quickly grew to possess. Fury took a slow breath, and Gabriel, bombarded with brutal knowledge, found his teeth clenching, a sudden viper of anger rearing inside of him as he regarded the pastor.

"You want to use it on _us?" _

"No," Fury replied immediately, before another one of them could get a single word out. "No, I absolutely do not. The Tesseract is a very valuable item, and there are all manner of things that humans could do with it... _one _of them being to—"

"To restrain angels like me."

Ezekiel, unlike Gabriel and Michael, didn't sound angry in the least. Instead, his tone was soft, almost velvet, so smooth that it caught Gabriel twice as aware as the fury in his older brother's had. There was a reserved well of subtle menace to the dark-haired angel's words, and Fury, from his widening eye, was just as conscious of it as the rest of them.

"It was an old plan. We scrapped it years ago, practically before it was formed. I don't even know how—"

"It was deep in your archives," Michael growled, "which were transported to this ship, along with all other surviving items of the church's extensions. Perhaps you would not have been able to find it at this point, but it is _foolish _to attempt to hide anything from an angel."

"We weren't trying to hide it!" Fury insisted, his tone gaining volume but still remaining far from aggressive, in contrast to that of the much more powerful being who glared so bitterly at him. "It's nothing. It's... it's scrapped," he repeated, pulling forth the same word once more out of pure desperation.

"To restrain angels like me," Ezekiel began again, just as steadily, as though he had never been interrupted in the first place. All stares snapped back to his, and a humorless smile drifted over his pale lips as he began to recite the information that Michael had poured hotly into his mind. "Those documents are emails. Communication between you and your associate pastors—Coulson, Hill, a few others. You suggested the idea of using the Tesseract to your own advantage. To the humans' advantage."

"I—"

"You thought that it could be useful not only in restraining demons, but, as you phrase it, _volatile angels... _I'm not cited as a precise example, yet... the alliance between us and the Holy Shield has not always been two-sided, has it? You call upon us now when you require our services the most, but all this time you have been plotting against us."

"Not _all this time!" _Fury insisted, the syllables ringing with emphasis. "Nothing near _all this time. _You must understand, all of you—these emails are from several years ago. I was younger, and I was more foolish, and I was afraid. Admittedly very afraid of you angels, and of your power. I respected you, I worshiped you, and yet I feared you. So I sought a refuge, as did my associates. I am sure, absolutely positive, that none of us would ever have followed through with the plan if we could. At that point, we weren't even sure _what _the Tesseract did—the theory of its being a key to Hell was one of thousands, and was forgotten long before the truth was revealed. It's by mere coincidence that our suspicions were correct. Coincidence. _Nothing _beyond that. Every one of us are wiser men and women now, and I can assure all of you that you are in no danger—no, that _we _are in no danger of the consequences that would come along with trying to work against you in the slightest."

The silence was a solid entity, settling over all of their shoulders, and Gabriel dragged in a slow breath to sustain his vessel, though his mentality was so perfectly ice-steady already that it was far from needing the support of additional oxygen. For several seconds, there was no sound at all but the rough, stifled jerks of Fury's own half-gasps, elevated by the heat of his arguments. The noiselessness was as pure as crystal, and then the fire exploded forth.


	9. IX

**IX**

The heat was furious against Raziel's cheeks and forearms, not burning, but instead immersing her in the suffocating totality of absolute raging warmth, cloaking the nose and stinging the eyes of her weak vessel with unforgiving smoke. She was so utterly consumed by the burst of vividness around her that she barely noticed she was falling; her wings, even if she had thought to extend them, wouldn't have been worth the risk, anyways. Though there was no sharp pain against her skin at the moment—she noticed this somewhere in the back of her mind, the part that wasn't utterly wrapped around the panic frothing inside of her despite her best efforts to remain calm—there was still a change that some element of this orange and gold tempest was holy fire, and she couldn't afford to lose her most powerful weapon against Lucifer and anything else that might ever pit itself against her.

She was falling, though—as soon as this thought fully formed in her mind, she was hitting the ground, feeling the impact of powerful wood against her bones as if from a distance. It was dangerous to distance herself from her vessel's sensations, as this could lead to considerable damage being dealt to her without her knowledge, but she had no time for the distraction of pain right now.

Still, gray and black pulsations attacked her eyes for several more seconds, and it took a long handful of dredging gasps to gather herself together to the point of becoming aware of the set of her jaw. The bone had been knocked aside by its impact with the wood, twisting the muscle; suspending the wince of annoyance that would only worsen the injury, she took a brief half-instant to concentrate the power of her heavenly grace on rearranging the damaged area, fixing it back into its proper position.

There. She had bruises and scrapes aplenty besides that, but she could take care of them later, once she had a better idea of what was going on.

Slowly, breathing in shallow huffs despite the fact that the smoke was mostly gone by now, she brought herself up onto her knees and elbows. A few coughs seized her pathetic human lungs, before she cooled them with another burst of grace out of pure annoyance. Better, but there was still a scintillating pain at the back of her head, one that she couldn't quite manage to shake.

What had happened?

She had been in the room with Gabriel and Ezekiel, had entered at the foot of Ramiel. Fury was there... yes, that was it; and recollection came to her now in a vivid flash, drowning out every other one of her uncertain streams of thought and uniting them into one sharp flow. Fury was there, and Michael arrived in the middle of the pointless discussion they'd been sharing in order to tell them what he'd found in the Holy Shield archives that had been transported onto the ship. Documents—documents proclaiming that Fury and the other priests intended to use the Tesseract to confine rogue angels to hell, where they'd suffer for all of eternity alongside their damned, rotten counterparts.

Anger reared like a snake inside of her. How dare he? There wasn't the slightest fragment of doubt in the whole of her galaxy-spanning being that she was one of those angels who would be classified as, by Fury's precise word, volatile. She certainly obeyed Heaven often enough—being the designated secret-keeper, it would be disastrous if she weren't to—but, when not on a specific mission, she had no problem with doing what she missed. Much as she attempted to value human lives, she supposed she'd thrown away a few in her time. More than a few, honestly, but she never counted those who discovered what she was and attacked her first; she hadn't had any choice with them.

Regardless, there was mortal blood on her hands, and that would be more than enough to throw her to the status of an outlaw, if the Holy Shield pastor and his ranks had any say in it, or so it would seem. Yes, Fury had said that none of it was true, that he wouldn't dream of doing such a thing to them... but how much faith could be stored in his words, truly? Raziel's stomach burned and oozed with pure repulsion at the thought, and, swamped as she was in disgust, it took nearly a full second for her to turn her mind around again, orient it properly towards the thought of what had happened in the time since Fury's inadvertent revealing.

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't the doing of him or any of the other humans, she knew. The flames that still sang around her now were far more dangerous to humans than they were to her, and she knew quite well that they would only destroy any person who dared to set them. No, there was something else interfering with their ship—perhaps Lucifer, though she couldn't imagine how he could possibly do something as stunning as set the vessel on fire from where he was confined. Lucifer—

And then the other thoughts came to mind, burning her all down her spine. For it was unmistakably the truth, and even her consideration of it seemed to cement it into definite reality, grinding against her recently healed skull, trembling along each of her ribs as though they were little beyond a human child's xylophone.

Uriel.

It had to be Uriel—and perhaps Selvig, but a task this massive could only truly be the doing of an angel, and he was the only one operating under Lucifer. Just the memory of her gold-eyed brother's words less than an hour earlier caused Raziel's eyes to narrow and her teeth to glint in the low light of the dying flames—his threats, his promises to hurt Uriel, to kill him only after he killed her...

She wouldn't think of that now, though. If Uriel was here—and she knew he had to be, somehow felt it in the electrified crackle of the air despite the fact that his telepathic signature would be unrecognizable at this point—if he was here, then she had a chance of getting him back, of rescuing him from whatever disgusting possession Lucifer had clasped him within.

Find Uriel. That was what she would do, then. The motivation fueled her easily to her feet, arms spanning out to provide proper balance in the absence of her still-hidden wings, and she took a long breath through her teeth, squinting around. She had fallen through the destroyed floor of the instrument room—sure enough, there were shattered golden fragments strewn amidst the bruised wood and siftings of ash lying around her. The fire had dulled now, but a thick layer of smoke obscured the fracture that she had fallen through, blocking her off from whatever might be seen above. The result was that she was in a very confined space indeed, practically blinded by the redundancy of gray and orange, and, despite herself, she couldn't quite manage to retract the long tendrils of her supernatural perception from the far recesses of the ship, which she probed again and again for any sign of the being that was once Uriel—rendering her, of course, nearly blind to her present situation.

Perhaps it was for that reason that she didn't realize she wasn't alone until she heard the snarl.

Her throat tightened as it wound through the air, raking invisible claws down her spine, and her pale eyelids slowly closed, so as to better optimize her other senses. There was someone else here, down with her. Something else.

Panting breaths. Then another hissed snarl, this time more high-pitched, narrowed into desperation. It wasn't human, certainly, but wasn't angel, either—too powerful to be a demon; she didn't need the sharp return of her seraphic awareness to know all too well what was slowly rising behind her.

Ezekiel.

She turned in a single swift movement, red hair slapping her cut cheeks, and her eyes locked on others—blank of pupil or sclera, but instead a solid veil of shrieking acid green, absolutely unrecognizable as the stare of her brother.

"Ezekiel," she got out, her gaze fluctuating over the rest of him—his shoulders were pulsing, near thrusting forth his wings, but he was still keeping them restrained; that meant that some part of him was still sane, still breathing beneath the monster that his wild grace was twisting him into.

"Ezekiel, it's alright. It's going to be alright. We're going to get out of this." Her firm vocal tone was only present in order to appeal to the more animal aspect of his nature; deep inside, she was firing each syllable forth with enough power to crush a small pyramid, pressing hard and fierce into his skull and whatever traces of reason might still be contained within it. Thoughts of Uriel hadn't fled her mind, but rather skated somewhere towards the back, where they huddled in seclusion, waiting for her to get herself out of the current situation, so that she could then worry about the concern of finding the angel who wasn't thrusting her into immediate, life-threatening danger.

Ezekiel groaned—a slow, eerie wail, building from behind his clenched teeth. His hands spasmed, fists flying wide until his fingers were sprawled out, clawing against the air. She tried voicing his name once more, striking forth with the energy of a thousand lightning bolts; Ezekiel—

"Ezekiel—"

His wings burst forth in a shuddering explosion of dark gray, shot through with twistings of that same awful pale green like poisoned veins laced under the thick, quivering feathers that arched above and around his lowered head. They flew wide, reaching what had to be at least a fourteen-foot expanse, then snapped together again, the force of a gale contained inside the brief beat. Raziel found herself tripping backwards, her throat sealed off and her wide blue eyes unblinking, the demented tempest of black and green reflected in their slow shine.

Ezekiel...

He roared, voice thundering forth in a noise that could be likened to the speech of neither human nor angel. It was a primitive call that shot terror through even Raziel's hardened blood, fueled with nightmares and pure anger, and she found herself turning, knowing in every part of her mind that the only thing left to do was run.

Run. Dodging pillars of flame, choking on smoke, forcing her legs to the point that might have torn the muscle were they not reinforced by her presence within them—run, run, run, but it still wasn't quite fast enough, and she knew that he would catch her any moment, knew from the crashes and shrieks of him coming from behind her like a material wrath, destroying each of the obstacles that she so carefully avoided, ripping the ship to shreds.

Ezekiel—

His name raged through her mind in cursed repetition, unable to steady itself, its distinct syllables the only thing she could hang on to in the storm of chaos that everything had suddenly become for her. The hallways of the ship that she had once thought herself familiar with seemed to go on forever, veering up and down and sideways, and still she pressed forth—it would have been easier, much easier if only she could release her wings, but, despite instinct's scream, every remaining scrap of rationality that she possessed reminded her that she couldn't risk them, she couldn't. For all she knew, this could be some sort of sick trap... still surely set by Lucifer, or one of his attendants...

This was it.

The knowledge hit her in a short, static burst, and a gasp of muted fear fell from her lips, resulting in a stumble that nearly sent her into Ezekiel's blind grasp.

Lucifer—his plan to unleash Ezekiel, to turn the deadly powerful angel's venom against those who were meant to be his allies... somehow, through physical triggering that must have come with the destruction of the ship by one of the Devil's lieutenants, that was what was beginning.

The realization, rather than terrifying her yet farther, cast a slow film of gray calmness over her previous panic. Of course. Lucifer was behind this, as he seemed to be behind everything; Ezekiel, beneath his shell of chaos, was good, and what she had to do was pierce past the resilient ferocity of his demented form and seek that last shade of kindness that dwelt underneath. However—and she knew this now, as she ran—doing so would be a near-impossibility. The safer course was to keep moving, but she couldn't forever; at some point, inevitably, she would have to turn and face him.

Her anxieties were cut off by a blast of thunder.

The sound preceded the shot of golden shadows that suddenly twisted and flexed around the hallway before her, throbbing before they condensed into the steady form of a broad-shouldered man, his head ducked but blue eyes still glittering powerfully. Snow-white wings extended like massive banners from his powerful sides, and clutched in the broad fingers of one hand was a hammer, its head heavy and silver, handle wound in leather that shone dimly, illuminated by his grace.

Ramiel.

"Brother," Raziel choked out, but he needed no cue—already, he was pulling back his arm, muscles straining around a thin layer of sweat, and then his hammer was swinging forwards, slicing across the path between his sister and the renegade Ezekiel, stopping the green-illuminated angel in his tracks. Ezekiel's teeth gleamed faintly lime as his jaws parted in a marrow-chilling howl of fury, but Ramiel was unfazed; he knew that this was what he had to do. He didn't need Raziel's brief flash of telepathic information to inform him that she was off to find Uriel. He was just as aware as her that the archer was the only one who could have set the ship forth towards the devastation that still gnawed away at its structure, and he equally knew, even ignorant as he was of the complexities concerning his estranged siblings' relationships, that she was perhaps the only one who could stop him, pierce through the cloak of ignorance and cruelty that Lucifer had wound tight around his mind.

Ezekiel, recovering from the initial shock of having the weapon thrust before him, was regaining his momentum, ragged dark wings pulsing and shining with burst after burst of static green energy. The acid-hued cloud consuming him now was unlike anything that Ramiel had ever seen, and he knew, beyond anything else, that it was dangerous, despite the fact that its appearance wasn't shrouded in the gold he'd come to associate with Lucifer, with evil. Whatever Ezekiel had transformed into now wasn't evil—on the contrary, it was remarkably natural, and perhaps that was what was so terrifying about it. He now was neither seraphic nor demonic, but instead something rawer, something lower than human, something born from the very depths of the primitive, iron-wrought Earth that their father had forged so many millennia ago.

What Ramiel confronted now was a beast of the ages, harnessed between the velvet wings of the creature he had once called brother.

He could afford to see Ezekiel as nothing but an enemy.

This thought flaming through his mind, he slipped forwards, his legs tilting sideways as he raised his hammer once more towards the center of his quarry's forehead. Ezekiel dodged easily and ducked around to his other side, where there was nothing to stand between him and the last red flash of Raziel's retreating form—rather than pursuing his sister, however, he flipped back towards Ramiel with a bellow. Ignorant of a creature as he was, he could do nothing like hold onto a single target for any extended period of time. Instead, he turned all of his pale emerald attention towards the being who was currently assaulting him: Ramiel.

"Give up, brother," the blonde-haired angel panted, his shoulders hanging heavy with the exertion of a mere few thrusts of his hammer, which remained, beside Michael's shield, one of the most powerful objects to exist in this plane or any other. "You are destroyed. You must wait until sanity finds you—"

Ezekiel had no desire to wait.

Frothing, his eyes twin green tempests, he hurled himself directly towards Ramiel, all the strength of his supernaturally reinforced stature contained in the single swift movement. Ramiel's mind flashed like the lightning that he knew so well, and, in an instant, he had swung around, wings tearing through the oxygen particles that formed the air, hammer arching in the opposite direction and soon colliding directly with the ripped shirt that sheathed Ezekiel's chest.

The impact, as the hammer with the shield had been, was momentous, a strange violet wave pulsing under his vision as his arms trembled furiously, absorbing the last traces of might that had gone into mustering the swing. Ezekiel drew in a ragged gasp, his form trembling in the half-second that it possessed before he crashed to the ground in an ungainly heap, releasing a wail of distress as soon as his head collided with the rough wooden floor; the boards had fallen away, exposing the splintered skeleton of the ship, and even its grace-strengthened structure shuddered under the weight.

Without thinking, Ramiel continued to push forwards, shoving the silvered head of the hammer into the part of the chest where the breastbone of his brother's vessel lay. The lungs beneath it, useless to the being trapped inside of them but fluttering with pure desperate instinct, heaved three or four times, then slowly relaxed.

Ramiel exhaled, suddenly aware of the sweat that ran under his hair and down his back, staining the inside of the loose, light clothing that he'd never bothered to change out of. As he rose to his full height, he noted Ezekiel's eyes—twin points of acid green, fixated on him with what now appeared to be an almost eerie calmness. The horrific creature was still awake, still stifling the consciousness of the angel lingering beneath, but Ramiel knew it couldn't last for much longer. He had extinguished, or at least suppressed, the anger, and there was nothing to be done now but wait, as the beast was unable to move, and wait for Ezekiel to fade back into his vessel's mind.

"I am sorry, brother," he murmured to the blank, pupil-less orbs that rolled and shifted, as if tilting about his image, appraising it from every angle. No words emerged from the pale lips, nor any sound at all, even the unintelligible snarls that Ramiel could still hear echoing through his skull after the brief but bone-shaking tussle. "To be trapped within yourself... why, it must be a whole new definition of hell."

Ezekiel did not respond, but his eerie, silent eyes shone brighter than ever.

* * *

Uriel was close.

This was the one thing that Raziel knew for certain as she pressed onwards through the hallways. She had reached the less destroyed sector of the ship, where only the faintest charring showed around the edge of the walls and painted ceiling, and an unshakable stillness clasped the air. In absence of pursuit, her heart beat too slowly, too steadily, and it was all she could do to keep her breath a measured motion, not to force the silence into nonexistence with the interruption of hasty lungfuls of air. She didn't need to breathe at all, of course, but it had somehow become a comfort, and she needed that steadiness now, even if it did have to be noiseless. It was nice this way. Even.

She was alert, and she would know—had to know—if anything was approaching.

Nothing was, for now. So she continued onwards, one foot after another, following not any psychic trace of Uriel, but instead pure instinct; she had always been closer to him than her other siblings, and they ended up behaving somewhat like twins, despite being some centuries apart in their actual age. Hide-and-seek was a loved game even among the seraphim, and they had always managed to find each other easily, despite the adamant, unspoken rule never to trace one another... she could do that now. He wasn't himself, yet he was still buried within the wrappings of his vessel, somewhere deep down, and it was that spark that she sought out now, counted towards with each breath and footstep.

Yet before she could quite detect it, the spark erupted into a flame.

It crashed against her ears and eyes and every other sense all at once—nothing near as consuming as the literal fire that had devastated the ship mere minutes before, but somehow all the more impactful for the way it blazed against her. Uriel—she knew it was him, could taste his presence underneath the panting bitter exterior that shoved her against one of the ship's walls now, the motion so aggressive that she could feel a few of the boards straining and even splintering behind her shoulders.

"Uriel." She hissed his name out through aching lips, drawing air past the blockage that the hard bone of his arm forced against her throat. Eyes were fixated on hers, the only thing she could see—not the flint blue ones that she knew so well, but rather glazed pools of stark gold, a shade she could liken only to the one she had detected in the depths of Lucifer's glare. "Uriel, I know it's—I know—"

For the briefest, briefest second, something inside of him shuddered, and then she was shoving forth, twisting him around until their position was reversed, and it was her marble-strong fingers wrapped around his throat, holding him in place. Articulate thoughts had long since fled her mind, but other motivations still sang through it, wordless yet brilliant—don't hurt. Restrain. He doesn't know. Make him know. His head—it's in his head. Lucifer.

"Uriel!" she exclaimed again, and this time it was a roar, bracing against her own ears and straining her throat. There was still no reaction beyond the slightest half-loosening of his muscles, and that only for a tiny fragment of a half-second before he surged forth once more, all of his unnatural strength pounding against her.

"This isn't you," she forced out, but the last syllable was flattened by one of his knees, suddenly up and in her stomach. She released a yowl of frustration as her pathetic human vessel curled and tumbled backwards, back stinging against the floor. He stood over her now, staring down, unaware—inside of him was Lucifer, and all Lucifer wanted was—

For him to kill her. She could remember his words, now—his horrible words, sending waves of torment through her; for it hadn't been acting, when she was horrified; not at all. The acting came later, when she mustered an even expression, pretended not to care—pretended not to care that she was being torn apart from the inside out at the mere image of her and Uriel being put through such twin torture, but not it was more than an image, now it was fact and it was boring down on her with all the weight of his eyes as he took one half-step closer, bending before her, the powerful tendons of his forearms standing out sharp against skin as he flexed his fingers, prepared to secure them around her whitened neck, extinguish the breath that her vessel now forced her to pull in desperately, heave after heave.

Uriel...

But his name was no help. Not now.

She had to take action.

At last, after suppressing them for so long as they ached against her, her wings flew forth behind her, beating down against the thin sheaf of air between her body and the floor, launching her up into the air high above him. Her heart rang out without noise as she brought a leg back, and there was only time for Uriel's features to soften in what might have been the slightest beginnings of doubt before she lunged forward, her foot colliding with his forehead and extinguishing the gold from his eyes like rain would a fire.


	10. X

**A/N** _I was asked to post a link to the original source of the cover art, so here it is (replace the word 'dot' with an actual '.' and remove spaces, since ff apparently needs to have all sorts of unnecessary complications when it comes to posting links): brilcrist dot deviantart dot com(slash)art(slash)Avenging-angel-Tony-326910828 _

* * *

**X**

As soon as the beast made of Ezekiel's demented spirit had been restrained, Ramiel set off again, half on his feet and half lifted by his wings, dashing swiftly around the sharp corridors of the ship in search of where his brother was imprisoned. There was no doubt whatsoever in his flaming mind that Lucifer was the source of all this; the angels had no other enemies nearly as formidable, and certainly none who were capable of such a thing as destroying the entire vessel that had taken so many ages and so much power to fully forge. Even as he ran, each foot pounding sharply into the boards below him, Ramiel knew that there wasn't much time left—built on such a strange and delicate plane as it was, the craft that they were currently inside of was fragile in some ways: for instance, it was, regrettably, entirely dependent on the power of the angels themselves, while needing no other fuel. This was his reason now for moving with his physical strength rather than launching into full flight and the teleportation that came with it—he needed to conserve as much supernatural energy as he could possibly manage. Otherwise, the scarred walls, which were already beginning to crumble around him, would only weaken further, and thereby diminish the fading life force of the only thing that was keeping them away from earthly threats.

Fire raged around every corner, causing Ramiel to be delayed by an unwilling hesitation whenever he encountered a turn. He skidded, his wings flaring behind him, as orange lightning clasped the air, and was achingly aware of the time passing, each second roaring against the inside of his skull, reminding him how close he was to losing, to being too late. He knew beyond a doubt that he was the only one who could properly stop Lucifer, if there was a chance now. Despite himself, despite his best intentions and all his constant strains at morality, he still cared for his elder brother, and he harbored the faintest trace of hope that those affections were returned. Lucifer may have no problem hating Michael and Gabriel, perhaps along with the rest of them, but, just perhaps, there might be the most miniscule of soft spots left inside of him for the one brother who had remained loyal, remained careful for so long after his fall.

Ramiel could hope, in any case. Hope had kept him aloft for centuries. There was no reason for it to fail now.

It was after several achingly long minutes that he finally found himself up against the door that led to the ring of holy fire. He wasted no time in forcing it open, his chapped lips already parted in half a plea—a plea to nothing, for he had stopped praying to his father long ago, back when the cutting decision was made to expel the creature who had now taken it upon himself once more to destroy the Earth and eradicate humanity in whatever demented way he saw fit.

The door resisted only for the briefest fragment of a second before lurching open, its wood straining and partially peeling away from the frame in damp splinters. What had been a polished, fine-working mechanism mere minutes ago now lagged and sank at the slightest provocation, but Ramiel couldn't let himself think about what that meant for the rest of the ship, not when he had to focus on the contents of the room he was now barging into.

It was, at first, almost impossible to see beyond the smoke—for the smoke was massive, stifling and constraining his throat as it wove between his lips, poisoned the underside of his tongue. It was richer than that of the weak mortal fire elsewhere, and he knew without thinking that these were the fumes of the holy prison that Lucifer had been shielded within, one that was now surely disintegrating, its tongues of flame weaving with those that had been set to the ship in the initial explosion, merging together until the whole room was nothing but a pulsating death trap for angels and humans alike, a crude vat of destruction rather than the finely crafted prison that it had been before.

Forcing out gasp after choke after heave, Ramiel raised one heavy warm to wave the thick gray gas away from his mouth and nose. His head swam regardless, pricked throughout by sharp points of golden light that he refused to give his attention to. Lucifer was still here, surely—if he squinted, he could make out shapes beyond the endless twirl of orange and silver; there was something moving, there, just feet away... a form—was it only one of the beams falling loose? But, no, a distinct head, the strong shape of familiar, thin shoulders, and, there, glinting in the golden glow, the coolest of smiles—

_Lucifer._

Ramiel couldn't restrain the wordless roar of defiance that devoured his lips and throat as he thrust out his wings, ignoring the vicious sting of the holy sparks as they propelled him forwards and into the part of the flames that Lucifer had been emerging from. One hand still clasped his hammer, which he swung around in a mighty heave, the leather grip slipping below the sweat-stained skin of his palm—the huge silver head of the weapon, however, collided only with empty air, and then his own free hand had to lift to stop it, thick fingers pausing the path of the deadly missile. He stumbled forwards a pace and a half, his own spirits racing at three times the speed of his vessel's straining heart as he turned—he was sure he had seen Lucifer, but any trace of the gold-eyed menace was gone now, vanished from his grasp like the smoke that rose in such thick abundance around his lone form...

A laugh. A laugh to match the smile that he'd thought he'd seen, but coming now from behind him... Ramiel felt his muscles twist almost before he was aware that he was turning, but, upon having spun fully on his heels, he found himself confronted with a solid blaze of heat and light, this the pure gold of the holy fire rather than flickering flat and chromatic yellow-orange like the rest. He nearly tripped over himself in his haste to move backwards, well aware that he would be reduced to dust if so much as a single bit of still-warm pure ash managed to land on him; his wings, before expanded in powerful defiance, quickly folded and shrunk back into his back. He couldn't risk the stretch of the extra appendages, not when they only landed him closer to the open flame.

The laugh repeated itself, a low, gentle bubble that stung his ears, and the fire thinned out just enough for him to make out the eyes behind it, shining of an identical hue now that Lucifer had no reason to disguise himself for so much as modesty. Pale fingers came together in a long, slow clap, and dark eyebrows lifted in mock-pity.

"Oh, dear, my brother. It appears that you've fallen for one of the very crudest of my little illusions."

Of course. Of _course—_and Ramiel could remember now, remember all too clearly how one of Lucifer's most favorite antics as a young angel had been to create flimsy duplicates of himself, populate the gilded roads of Heaven with such entities and make a fool of all those who attempted to engage or converse with them, for they would only ever flash a smile and twist into smoke. A smile exactly like the one that Ramiel had just been confronted with, as he realizes now, sickened by his own stupidity. Hope, in this case, had misled him; he had gone so far as to believe that he had arrived just in time, that he could at least wrestle Lucifer back into the cage, but now his brother was free, and he himself imprisoned.

_Himself imprisoned. _He realized this now, something invisible swelling in his throat. Though he still retained some desperate ideal that Lucifer would not kill him—at least not at first, before he got the chance to talk and presumably save himself with that—there was no doubt that he was in far more danger now than he had been while fighting with Ezekiel, or at any other point in the strange, seemingly one-sided battle thus far. It was only now that he truly felt the volume of his vessel's heart and the pump of its lungs, both raging together to try and chain the body into life. It was adrenaline, he supposed, that scratched him up and down with the overpowering urge to run, but he was wiser than that, as well. He couldn't move. Lucifer had him trapped.

_The perfect prison._

"You do not need to do this, Lucifer." It was a pathetic idea, but it was his only one—if he could talk enough, each word shot through with all the desperate emotion he could possibly muster, there was some extent of a bare chance that Lucifer might change his mind. Not flit instantly to the good side, of course, but perhaps spare Ramiel's life. The golden-haired angel had never come face-to-face with such an utter threat of mortality, and, for a creature raised on the notion that he alone was indestructible, he imagined there must be fewer things more terrifying than the concept of the famed void of nothingness being close enough to breathe upon. He knew as well as anyone what the end for angels would be, if they were cursed with one—not Heaven, not Hell, not Purgatory, but nothing. The flatness of nonexistence, unawareness. If Lucifer continued, he would no longer be. No longer know. No longer feel.

"I don't particularly _need _to, that's true. My father didn't _need _to cast me down, either. You didn't _need _to turn traitor in your defiance of such an action."

The two incidents, when juxtaposed, fired something bitter in Ramiel's stomach, and he was near defending himself with rampant fervor when Lucifer continued, slender shoulders moving in the most casual of shrugs.

"Few of us ever need to do anything. For instance, you don't need to stop me, just like I don't need to kill you."

"Just like you don't need to kill billions of innocent humans," Ramiel contradicted, his throat shifting. "They never did a thing to harm you, brother. They fear you, yet some through a twisted respect. You have nothing to gain by destroying them."

"Oh, I don't want to _destroy _them," Lucifer sniffed, as if the very idea was unbelievable, even petty. "As you say, there's nothing to gain that way. No, quite the contrary... I intend for them to assume their rightful place: below me. Below us. I believed, for a time, that you may be one wise enough to join me in this journey... for it is _right, _you do know. Whatever labels of _evil _have been slapped upon me in my absence are only hurtful. I want nothing but to enslave the people that were meant to serve as sheep. They've grown into something too big, too wild, too dangerous for us to allow to continue while we still exist. The humans treat me like a demon, brother. I am not a demon. I am greater than a demon. More powerful. I am an _angel, _and I believe it is high time they realize quite precisely what that means."

"You are fallen," Ramiel contradicted, hating the burn of the words in his mouth—for they were those which had been scorched across his skin so many times, by so many thorny tongues. _He is fallen. You have nothing to gain in defending him. You only make yourself look like as much of a traitor as he ever was. _Yet, now, when faced with Lucifer's crazed fixation upon his own race, there was nothing to do but acknowledge that, quite plainly, the fact of him being fallen was the truth.

"Perhaps. But at least I am still alive. I am still able to twist things towards the way they should be. Whereas you, brother... why, you don't have all that much longer at all. I'd rather say that the only act you have left to perform is your final goodbye. Shall we see just how much fire it takes to burn an angel?"

"Brother, _wait!" _Ramiel bellowed, the words ripping forth with all the strength he could muster, until their sonic thunder trembled against the flaming cage locked around him. It was no use, though. He could already feel the fierce grip of his brother's telekinesis fixated upon him, a thousand times stronger than he ever imagined it could be. His feet slipped against the floor, his wings twisting in a desperate effort to rip free, but there was nothing—nothing he could do as the flames inched closer to his back, as he bent towards throwing himself into them, being consumed in their raging jaws, knowing that his last sensation would be one of pure, blazing pain...

"Stop!"

A voice, cutting through the chaos. A human voice, weak, trembling with fear even as it rang out as proudly as it could surely muster...

Pastor Coulson.

Ramiel's jaws parted, attempting to forge a warning, but it was too late—though the flames were still rampant, Lucifer's silhouette shown sharp through them, and was now joined by another, one that took a step closer, its jagged breaths seeping through the smoke as it lifted something that looked like it could be a gun. A _gun. _Such a simple, pathetic weapon for a human to have... not one that would pose any challenge whatsoever to the Devil itself.

_No. _He knew what was coming, yet he could not accept it. The memory of Coulson as he spoke to him, claiming that he wasn't brave... thinking without words that he wasn't worthy of his position on the ship—

_You are the most courageous of any of them. _Ramiel's lungs ached with these words now, but they could not emerge, and the space that they might have fallen into was instead filled with only the brief crackle of Lucifer's laugh, before a stream of light more vivid than any of the flames erupted from the shadow's palm—there was a cry of pain from Coulson, and then his shivering form fell to its knees before dropping down entirely, agonized wail dimming and wetting to a faint, gasping gurgle.

"No." Ramiel's tongue was heavy. "No—_no!"_

But there was nothing he could do, nothing at all, and now Lucifer was whirling around again, and his eyes, twin shards of pure, pure gold, were the only part of him properly visible, burning deep into Ramiel's chest, singeing through every fiber of his being as viciously as any fire possibly could as he was thrust backwards, and there was nothing left between him and the flames.

* * *

The fire suddenly seemed very quiet, Coulson thought.

It was still there, certainly, but the previous snarl was reduced to a gentle hum, pulsing against his eardrums, which practically bent into it. It was very gentle. Almost soothing, though the rage of the orange and red around him was far from such. He was simultaneously far too hot and pierced through with a cold that sunk deep within his bones, and he felt his mouth twisting, a bitter grimace beginning to take shape as the flavor of rusted iron rose under his tongue and at the back of his throat, so suffocating that he could barely form words.

"I..."

Strange. It was quite a challenge to form the simple syllables, even in contrast to the lack of ease with which they'd flowed before this strange impairment settled over him.

"I don't... think... you'll make it."

His chest was moving quickly, rising and falling at the corner of his vision. He felt no pain but the throbbing ache from his awkwardly positioned neck, which hung tilted against his shoulder, forced into limpness, like the rest of him, by how numb every cell of his being had suddenly become.

He was watching Lucifer. The gold-eyed devil who had so easily extinguished his own brother, who now stood with his head high and his pale throat rough with silent laughter. There was no regret in his gleeful expression. No mercy, either, as he turned towards Coulson, his lips and nose drawn into such utter distaste that it was almost painful, sickening to regard. Despite the fact that Coulson had been taught again and again that this was the lowliest, most gruesome and undeserving being on the planet, he felt only petty for being scorned by it. Like a fly that could so easily be crushed beneath Lucifer's boot.

"Don't think I'll make it where, petty human? There is all matter of hope for me. You are a child. There is nothing for you... nothing at all. In fact, I'd say you have only seconds left in your meager span. A pity, really."

"Not... not hope." He found himself coughing, and the noise was much more amplified than anything that had issues from either of their mouths, causing him to quake as if struck by a vermillion tempest. "You have no hope. The Devil does not."

"Vermin. I will show you—well, perhaps not you, unless you care to look down from _Heaven." _The burning floor took, ash and embers sifting along it, as Lucifer traipsed closer, his chin held high, a maniacal grin glowing orange in the light of the flames that arched around him, striking out his dark and pale figure as the only spot of colorlessness in the room that was being rapidly devoured. Everything was disintegrating save Lucifer—Coulson wondered, for a brief instant, whether he himself was melting into ash as well, but the thought soon seemed irrelevant in the light of what he was regarding.

The Devil. Dying nose-to-nose with Satan. It was never an end he would have wished upon himself, yet now he knew that it could never have been any other way. He had never had another enemy so despised, who blackened such a secluded and empty chamber of his own heart. He hated Lucifer, hated him with all of the sick emotion that he could never properly bring himself to direct towards any other creature on, above, or below Earth. Lucifer was evil. And, for a man as good as Coulson, evil was the only thing that could truly destroy him.

"You won't," Coulson swore, the words laden with as much truth as he could possibly pull onto them. "Not if I can... not if I..." And then even that was too much, for the trace of energy remaining inside of him was curled at his center, barely allowing for even the faintest trace of breath, let alone any other external movement. His voice lost itself somewhere, sinking into the folds of his blood-slicked throat, and Lucifer laughed again at his silence, the sounds pouring forth like acid from his pale lips.

"Not if you can what, human? Grovel? True enough, there is no time left for you to submit for me. _You _went down a _martyr, _as they put it. But the rest... the rest will see. Fury and Hill will be on their knees... pity you won't be able to join them, wouldn't you say?"

The gun. The gun, somehow, was still in his hand, clasped loosely, heavy with its holy oil-slicked bullets. Of course, as Fury had told him earlier, there was no guarantee that they would ignite upon firing... it could be a waste. Or perhaps not a waste, not entirely—if he could only scar some aspect of Lucifer's being, as the bullets doubtless would, that would be enough. Not kill him, but get close. Close enough to know that his life wasn't entirely wasted.

He could form no more words. But his fingers found the trigger, tracing the metal curve, and Lucifer's laugh boiled in his ears as he focused every last element of energy he possessed on tilting the muzzle, directing it towards the horrifically delighted face swimming above him.

_I will not die in vain, you cruel creature._

It seemed that he had only just depressed the trigger when the wound appeared, a large gash along the side of Lucifer's shoulder, nearly a miss—a yelp flew from the lips as they twisted into the darkest of scowls, and he twisted with the impact, nearly falling to his knees as a slow stream of deep bronze ichor licked the edge of his dark sleeve.

"You damned _beast!" _Lucifer shouted, the words bruising his throat, but Coulson could no longer hear him. The bullet had not ignited, he recognized faintly—he had not killed the Devil, but perhaps that was for the best. He had no desire to go to Heaven with any death on his shoulders, even that of the most dreaded being in the universe. It was a job for Fury, or perhaps Hill, or any of the angels. Maybe he had weakened him, he noted as the shadows began to leap out of the walls, stretching over his eyes and struggling to obscure the rage and light of everything else. Lucifer was gone, though he didn't know whether that was due to his teetering awareness or the Devil's actual disappearance. Perhaps he had distracted him for now. It was only a nick, he knew, something that the creature would easily recover from... yet he had done it. He had dashed oil across the skin of the despicable being, and that was something. That was something for him to hold on to as the darkness began to tilt in.

The next thing he was aware of was heavy boots on the half-eaten floorboards before him, and he was briefly confused, upset in some vague element of his being that he wasn't at the pearlescent gates already, but instead still stranded here, among the flames. Even the traces of pain that had before run through his muscles were entirely extinguished, and he felt everything as if from a great distance, heard Fury's coarse tones like they were shouted towards him from deep underwater. He was already detached, yet there was something still chaining him down, not yet allowing him to escape his body.

He hoped that he _would _die. It would be ever so much a shame if he were to be forced to remain here, after everything, after the best end that he could have asked for... he didn't dislike life, of course, had no sort of death wish before now, but he knew, somehow, that dragging him back at this point would be wrong. He'd had enough. Any more would be too much, and he would never want to live with that sort of burden.

Fury's hands were on his own limp, pale ones, he thought. Or perhaps—perhaps not... it was ever so hard to tell, and maybe all that he thought to be touches of the other man were only licks of flame, and perhaps he was already cinder, clinging to his usual form and waiting only to fall apart, to release his spirit properly into the cool breeze that he felt behind and around him.

A cool breeze. Out of place in this furnace of flame, yet he knew it was there, lingering around the edges of reality. Perhaps it had arrived to carry him away.

Fury was talking. Or at least his mouth was moving, his single eye glaring down in an expression that was far from anger. Coulson hoped that he wasn't disappointed in him, that he hadn't done anything stupid, that it hadn't been wrong of him to let Ramiel go... surely there was nothing more he could have done. Surely, even if the job wasn't executed perfectly, they would forgive him. The angels would forgive him. God would forgive him.

If not... well, at least there was no suffering left to be had. He was free, now.

Pastor Phillip Coulson didn't feel his eyes close.


	11. XI

**XI**

Ramiel was devastatingly aware of the flames as they surged up to envelop him, orange and golden tongues twisting with hunger, with the need for their cruel consumption of angel flesh—they were ready to rip him apart, to reduce him to quavering ash, render him pathetic in the eyes of even the weakest human—something capable of being crushed beneath their boot. Seconds remained for him as the false wind of Lucifer's telekinetic shove buffeted his cheeks and jaw—less than seconds, less than instants or fragments of instants—it was there—it was _here—_around him—

He twisted, and then was elsewhere.

His hammer was heavy in his hand, the only definite object that he could cling to as a dark vortex of metaphysical wind encompassed him, tangling what it could of his hair, flipping his stomach and churning against the ichor in his veins. He had never before teleported himself so rapidly, or with such a surge of power, and, for a too-long moment, he was entirely lost, tumbling through the hurricane cloud of nothingness, before the weight of the hammer he held was enough to solidify him, bring him back into pressing awareness. Flexing his forearm, he was able to muster up his last traces of energy, push himself against the boundaries of his colorless prison. Full seconds surged by, and a denser black rose behind his aching eyes, threatening to consume him if he didn't quick escape the pressing reality of the energy vacuum that last-minute teleportation had thrust him into.

Yet then the nothingness was peeling back—in its place, he caught a glimpse of a grey cloud-strewn sky, a stretching curve of light green that rippled in the tired sun, and then he was plowing into the dirt, bits of sod and fragments of roots smashing against the face of his vessel, breaking the nose and nearly snapping the neck. His wrist bent beneath him, and the muscles of his legs screamed in agony as they hit the ground in a broken heap. All at once, the net of movement spanned out into flat steadiness, and he felt only a heavy, constant stabbing in his chest, right around where his vessel's heart was located, pounding against the inside of his ribcage until he could practically feel scar tissue forming around the assaulted area.

His ears were ringing. Escape—he had escaped, somehow, in an instinctive burst of energy that may not have been worth it—for, in allowing himself to survive like this, he damned the rest of them, robbed the ship of his vital energy and left it a fraction as strong as its already trembling hull had been before. Lucifer was still there, and the body of Coulson, who surely couldn't still be alive by now, and the rest of them—Gabriel, Raziel, Michael, Ezekiel... _Ezekiel, _and he must be an absolute mess by now, self-destroyed as he had been, and then below the pin of Ramiel's hammer... he couldn't even remember when it returned to his hand, yet it must have, at some point on the ship; without its help, he well knew now, there would have been no way for him to escape the trap alive.

Alive. He was alive. Or as alive as angels ever were, considering that they were nothing but souls, a grander elaboration on the weak shades that humans called ghosts. Ghosts were grey; angels were golden, yet it could hardly be said that strength gave them a greater claim to mortality. On the contrary, it was a good deal harder to destroy them, due not only to their virtual invincibility but also the ferocity of their own instincts—the latter being, of course, what had saved Ramiel this time.

He didn't know where he was, though. Stranded in the middle of somewhere that smelled of grass, unable to so much as lift his chin and process his surroundings beyond a rasping inhalation that further richened the earthy smell. Every cell in his body ached, and he knew that the damaged vessel would be vaporized if he weren't within it, holding its fragile form together. As it was, with the last of his energy expended to deliver him from the flames in the first place, there was nothing to do now but keep breathing, and wait for something else to come, something else to save him.

In. Out. In. Out. It hurt so badly—

Lucifer. Lucifer had done this. The brother who he had cared about so much, for so long, and he had done this, near-killed Ramiel entirely—if he'd had it his way, the younger angel _would _be dead. Ramiel had been loyal to him for years, decades, centuries after his fall, retained some amount of that even now, and his reward was this: the cold attempt at murder. The Devil never could have made an ally. He was pure evil, and Ramiel saw that now, perhaps more so than ever, for some extent of him had certainly been blinded before, even when he thought that he knew the truth.

He wanted to be able to tell the rest, tell his siblings that he had finally seen the right way. Tell his father... tell Fury... tell _Coulson..._

But Coulson, for one, had never known. The associate pastor had paid for Ramiel's mistakes with his own blood—for the angel knew all too well that, if only he had stayed clear of Lucifer's prison and the trap awaiting inside of it, the human would not be dead or dying now. Surely the former; he couldn't have made it that long after the cruel stab that Ramiel's own eyes were now scarred with.

It was his fault that Pastor Phillip Coulson was dead. There was no denying that.

Yet he was buzzing with numbness, and could, at present, feel no grief. Instead, there was the lingering haze, the gnawing urge of his vessel to let him rest, recuperate and salvage whatever it could. He hoped, vaguely, that he _would _be able to keep this body; it had been his for centuries, and would cause a great internal upheaval to switch around now, one that he truly couldn't afford.

Couldn't afford. There were lots of things that he couldn't afford. Couldn't afford to be separated from his siblings, yet he was here now, perhaps leagues away, realities away, infinities away... and so, so tired...

* * *

As Ramiel's eyes closed, Ezekiel's opened.

They were no longer the blazing acid green of before, and, in accordance, some of the starchy whiteness had drained from his face, leaving him blanched but still with some health alive within him. His dark hair was in tangles across a sweat-streaked forehead, and his chest heaving as he gasped in breath after relieved conscious breath, trying to pull himself together. For a long series of instants, his mind was nothing but alive with verdant fire, something that he had grown used to occurring after a transformation. It burned against him, yet he managed to breathe to counter the ferocity, and his hands, curled into painful fists at his side, gave him something more material to cling onto as the lightning surged through him, each wave accompanied by a low moan or whimper of desperate agony.

It didn't matter. He deserved every last pinprick.

He couldn't remember, yet, couldn't think about anything beyond the fact that it had happened. He may have hurt someone, hurt many—sometimes, awareness from his awful phase would come back, patchily or all at once, yet there was no way to depend on that. It was all too likely that he might never know, especially seeing as there didn't appear to be any way for him to access a way back to the rest now. He couldn't even remember falling, yet his back screamed, and so he knew that he must have hit something—from a great height; perhaps whatever pushed him was even enough to transcend realities, for the plane that he found himself lodged in now seemed far from metaphysical. On the contrary, the glorious agony that hummed around him now was all too material—he was back on Earth, then. Had to be Earth, from the distinctive smoggy sky that arched above him, the only thing he could perfectly make out without moving his head.

His body, at least, was healed from whatever had broken it. He became aware of this as the last traces of his unwilling sleep fell away, leaving him with a body that felt exhausted but healthy enough. His other side, as always, had run him through something extreme, something merciless—but something, nonetheless, which stretched him in every manner imaginable, resulting in an overall fitter manner. It strengthened him in a way that he could never manage, himself, and something about that was rather terrifying—it made it seem more powerful than him, and though he knew that it _was, _it still hurt to contemplate the fact with any sort of depth. It was better to think that his resistance was mastery, that he was mighty enough to keep this crude beast at bay... yet he knew it wasn't true—

No, he wouldn't go there. Wouldn't waste his thoughts. He had to figure out where he was, how to get back to the ship. What could he remember? Raziel. All of them, even Fury, in a room with a thousand machines, but Raziel most distinctly, with glimmers of Ramiel, the thunder angel, lurking around the edges. No definite images, only a sense... perhaps that was it, then. Maybe they had taken care of him. Pushed him off of the ship, even... he certainly wouldn't blame them if that had been their course of action. In fact, he would have done the same, if he'd had even the slightest bit of control over himself.

They must have fought him, to force him down here. And if they had fought him, that meant that _he _had fought _them, _a concept infinitely more terrifying. He hoped, in a cold, gnawing way, that none of them were hurt, that he hadn't damaged anyone save, perhaps, Lucifer—for if they were hurt, if a single one of his still-pure siblings had been damaged or even extinguished by his own sick hand...

No. _No, _he was doing _that _again, and he couldn't, he wasn't allowed to. It was a rule he'd made a long time ago, and there was no sense to breaking it now. _Focus. _He had to focus.

Something had triggered his transformation. Anger? It used to be anger... yet there was something else, something physical, a great flaming shift that had surged across him in a blast of air and fire...

His head rewarded his prying with a ferocious stabbing agony that pushed forth a cry of pain from his lips. Such was the way when he tried too hard to find the memories meant to be locked off to him; there was no point, now, for his too-intent searching would now have sealed it all off permanently, set off some emergency system of blockage that his absurd mind had devised against him.

He had nothing, then. He was blank. Entirely blank. There was surely something he was meant to be doing, yet he had no way of knowing what that something was—the result, of course, being that he was here, stranded on his back in what seemed to be an abandoned human building, knowing only that the others were elsewhere, and that they most likely needed his help, if he was capable of offering any.

_Most likely. _Or perhaps they wanted him here. Wanted him gone, out of their way so that they could go about with what they needed to... the thought was almost more devastating, yet also provided a cold, sneering reassurance. _There's no point to your finding them. Perhaps they'd rather you didn't..._

And he couldn't if he tried, for they were not here, but somewhere else, a different plane, on a burning ship that he couldn't track down unless he held all the power of God Himself...

There was no point. No hope. There was _nothing _to try and hold on to, and so Ezekiel could do little but close his eyes again and try to suppress the vicious ache of all-too-human tears.

* * *

_Raziel. _

He knew her name before anything else, and his hands instinctively clenched against nothing but themselves, nails cutting into his palms and raising forth a sheen of sweat that was invisible from behind his squeezed-shut eyes. The word—the name, framed through such strong syllables—coursed through his head again and again, each time like a strike of lightning, trembling through his core and dragging a long gasp to his lips.

"Shh... just rest, for now..."

His head hurt. More than anything. More than he knew it was capable of hurting—he barely heard her voice behind it all, yet it was there, and something caught in his the throat of his weak vessel, so that he was struggling forth once more, against the strain and throb of his skull, against the desperation somewhere deeper down that begged him to remain quiet and unknowing, not to become aware, not to know all that had happened to him... for something had happened. He knew not what, but something had... something had happened, and now he was here, and everything was aching, and—

"Calm down. You're making it worse."

His eyes were open, suddenly, and he didn't remember what action must have forced them into that position, but they were there now, lids pressing up against his skull and resulting in even more throbbing pangs. Everything he did was too extreme, too severe—he just wanted to be able to lie still, as Raziel seemed to be encouraging him to, but he also had to see her... everything was bright, far too bright, and his eyes strained to find her dark red hair amidst all the blinding whiteness.

There. A slim figure, bent down over him, emerald-hued eyes intently fixated on his own... something inside his chest twisted, and he felt his cheeks ache in a weak, unconscious attempt to form a smile.

"You mustn't strain yourself, brother."

"You saved me?" he questioned in response, trying at the same time to draw forth his own memories and let them do the answering for him. There was little to be had, however... past the pain, he could only pull forth an overwhelming blank, and felt a slow wave of nausea run through him at the realization that something had happened, something to induce such a bizarre amnesia. Something bad, undoubtedly, very bad—his mouth twisted away from the loose half-smile from before, into a fierce grimace, and his flimsy human lungs strained as he fought to force himself past the blockage—it was as if he were throwing himself repeatedly against an iron wall, however, for nothing resulted but farther archs of agony.

"I saved you," Raziel promised, reaching out a hand and securing his wrist between her softer fingers. Her intent squeeze drew out a swift breath from him, and helped him to slowly regain his focus, drifting away from thoughts of the past to instead focus on her reassurance. She must be telling the truth, and that meant that it was okay—it had to be.

"...What from?"

Her previously stone-intent gaze softened slightly, and her lips grew looser, brows drifting upwards in sweet sorrow. "Uriel, you—you don't remember?"

"What is there to remember? It doesn't help when you say that... please, Raze, you're scaring me... just tell me? I can worry about the pain later."

"...Lucifer," she sighed, the syllables slipping past her tongue like water too strong for its dam. Uriel's insides clenched at the name of his fallen brother, and he felt a ripple of anger course through him, somehow managing to both dull and intensify the pain that snarled at the back of his neck and brainstem.

"Lucifer?"

"He possessed you—you and Erik Selvig, and we haven't gotten Selvig back yet, but you attacked the ship, Uriel, the ship we were on... so much has happened, and you don't know any of it, do you? You really don't..."

_He possessed you. _The word ran like a stream of acid through his mind, burning past everything in their past, until there was nothing else to think of, nothing else to care about. _He possessed you. _And now the reason for the pain is all too clear; of course, of _course _it had to be Lucifer, and of course it had to be _him, _Uriel, turned against his brothers, turned against Raziel, turned against Holy Shield. And he hurt them—he must have hurt them, and could only hope it wasn't too many, wasn't overwhelming, for he knew not what he would turn to if he had killed one of those who he once called friend, or, worse, family...

"Is anyone dead?" He asked the question without fear of what the response may be, for he knew that there was nothing she could say that wouldn't hurt him—if they were all alive, then it meant only that he had more left to lose. He wanted to know. That was what mattered, nothing more. Get the facts, process the facts, move on.

"Barely, we—we came out victorious, just by a miniscule amount. We're on the ship, Michael and Gabriel are managing to keep it afloat though they're both worn... Lucifer has vanished, as have Ramiel and Ezekiel—we've all come together, you see... I suppose you weren't even there for that."

_Ezekiel. _He was more than a little surprised by the news that they had recruited the rogue angel of Purgatory, but chose not to question it. He had heard little from Michael or Gabriel in the past few decades, but he trusted them—the former especially—to make the best decisions that they could. Though it had, apparently, led them to this. Whatever _this _truly was.

No need to dwell on the details, though. He needed to concentrate on her answer to his question, her slippery words. "Barely. Who was it, Raziel? Who was killed?"

Her eyes fell. "Pastor Coulson. Lucifer killed him, we think... Fury came in just in time to find him bleeding to death."

Coulson, dead. He absorbed the shock wave without comment. He couldn't afford to care, not right now. "Anyone else?"

"Not yet. I fear for Ramiel and Ezekiel, yet Michael believes we would feel it if either of them were to be extinguished, and my spirit is intact, if turbulent. I trust it's the same for you."

"Something close to that." He was far from turbulent; after the initial surge of pain, he found himself to be almost frighteningly collected. He couldn't afford anything else. He had to remain strong, especially when the rest of them were scared—for it was obvious, far too obvious that Raziel was afraid, despite her cool words and steady jaw. And if Raziel, the most resilient being he knew, was frightened, then he didn't dare to think about the condition that the rest of his siblings might be in, let alone the humans.

He would have to keep fighting against his own weakness, then. It couldn't be too much of a challenge. He was used to it, and the world needed him.

* * *

Coulson was dead.

Gabriel didn't know what to think. Whether to care. Whether it was wrong that he couldn't feel whether he _did _care, or if that was only numbness, numbness from caring too much—all he knew was that he could not quite smile, as he and Michael stood before Fury, a strong silence radiating between the triad of two angels and one human.

None of them had words. None of them had so much as shame, even a trace of anger. There was only the quiet, and, in a strong current underneath it, the pounding of their three hearts, barely audible but still present and definite to Gabriel's sensitive ears. All going too fast, despite the fact that they weren't moving so much as a hair's breadth, even to tremble, even to breathe.

Coulson was dead, and their ship was still afloat, just barely suspended upon the combined energy of Michael's grace and Gabriel's fire, though it drew upon him in sharp bursts, singeing his veins, not allowing his mouth to be anything but dry. It didn't hurt, per se, yet he knew that he couldn't go on like this for long, that neither of them could. They needed somewhere to touch down. Somewhere where Lucifer would be.

Yet he didn't know where. He was lost, inside and out of himself, and it was the single most horrific feeling imaginable. For him, for a leader who only knew his place at the head of all that mattered, it was strange, unnerving to have his own confidence ripped out from beneath him. And only due to a tiny error. Because something had allowed fault with Coulson, and now he was dead, and, despite the fact that there were so many others with a hand in it, Gabriel, at his root, could find no one to blame but himself.

Perhaps what the sensation was. Defeat. Even in victory. Pathetic, truly, how these things sometimes turned out.

"Damn it," he finally spat out, shattering the stillness as he turned on his heel, heat flashing across his face and down his spine, congealing around his invisible wings. "Damn it all. There's no point."

"There's a point," Fury was trying, apparently unaware of how weak, how desperate his words sounded. "Coulson was... Coulson was a strong loss... we will all mourn him, but—but you are _angels. _Surely you—"

Of course, of _course _the accursed _human _wouldn't understand. Gabriel, utterly unable to contain his contempt, stepped away, ignoring even Michael's sharp snap of psychic insistence that he stay behind, that he at least talked it out, formed a plan—he didn't care. He didn't see any use to a plan. They had already lost.

And perhaps it was unfair of him to be doing this, to be valuing Coulson's life so highly—yet, in a way, it was so much more than Coulson's life. It was the loss of an innocent, of perhaps the only innocent who remained onboard. With him gone, they were nothing but brute power. Nothing but soldiers, and Gabriel could imagine fewer things more pathetic than that, or more evil.

Lucifer himself was stronger than that, even. And it was like a crack to Gabriel's ribcage even to consider it, so that he was grateful that he was out of the room by the time the thought hit him, down one of the many hallways snaking through the ship—they weren't safe, now, with the unstable condition that the ship's framework was in, and none were supposed to enter, but Gabriel didn't care. Despite himself, despite their purpose, despite it all, he just _couldn't care. _

He was mindless. Devoid of passion. But Lucifer—

Lucifer had a _drive. _Lucifer cared, and he wanted everyone to know. Wanted to show it off, even, make himself the one worthy of a monument in New York City, some wretched Diabolical Monument that would dwarf Gabriel's own—

_Gabriel's monument. _

And then, cued only by the few brief words wandering through his mind, there was lightning in his chest again, and he wasn't just breathing because he needed to as he turned back, dashed back towards the room that contained Fury and Michael, the floor seeming to fly out from beneath him as a surge of energy, drawn through his body, flared up throughout the ship, momentarily summoning a soft shine back onto the floorboards and a hint of metallic gleam upon the fresco-splattered walls.

Lucifer had the Hell Key, undoubtedly, and Gabriel knew just where he planned to use it.


	12. XII

**XII**

It felt good to be back on Earth. Lucifer never would have expected to be so pleased, as his thoughts of the place had always been stained by dirt and blood, forced to the very bottom of his appreciation due to the fact that the planet was home to such a despicable collection of beings. Yet on its own, and graced with the structures that they had been kind enough to erect across its massive, curving surface... well, it wouldn't make a poor habitation for angels such as himself. Nothing beside Heaven, of course, but Heaven wouldn't exist much longer. The humans would be the first to go, then Michael and the rest of the angels who refused to see the truth—he wouldn't get ahead of himself, though, despite the fact that the mere thought of the impending conflict was enough to stir him into an eager frenzy. He'd been desiring such a fight with his brother for millennia, and here he was now—it would take the demons less than a single year to exterminate the human population, and at some point within that time, Michael would respond—Lucifer would learn, and almost certainly to his advantage, just how _powerful _the ridiculous, fabled shield really was.

Yet, for now, he had to concentrate on the humans. So it was that he stood at the very top of Gabriel's pathetic Seraphim Monument, gazing down with golden eyes at the people that swarmed below, moving thickly through the weight of their own oblivion. They had no idea what now stood above them, despite the fact that he had been careful to render himself entirely visible. They were naive, and their naïveté was a blessing; with his intentions, however, it would not last for long.

The Tesseract glittered equally bright in Lucifer's hands, his pale skin incapable of being so much as nicked by the hissing burn that it emitted. He had gotten it back from Selvig—luckily the one he had been keeping it with, rather than Uriel, who had been knocked completely from his psychic grasp. Though he was irritated, no great concern sprung from the loss—he knew that, soon enough, the number of angels would be practically irrelevant against the overwhelming mass of the demons that he was to conjure, and that was enough to ease concern.

"Come, now, my twisted children," he whispered. His breath settled in foggy clouds over the surface of the perfect cube, soon fading away, burned into nothing by the stunning glow of the golden surface. He knew how to use it. It was easy—so simple that even a human could manage it. He had already imbued it with the blood of that pathetic man's heart, which it had absorbed as readily as it did the condensation sprung from his lungs. It hummed now, a soft note that pricked at the edges of his consciousness, and it was ready—any sharp movement of it would allow the edges to cut a fissure between dimensions, opening Hell, releasing his demons.

There was no time to waste.

With his widest smile since his landing on Earth, Lucifer thrust his hands up and into the air, and the Tesseract sailed high across the pale arc of the blue sky, slicing a huge gash through the innocent atmosphere and releasing his frothing army.

* * *

Gabriel was waiting inside.

He wasn't sure what told him that Lucifer would enter the monument at all—after all, logic said quite clearly that the fallen angel would rather observe his own glory, watch everyone be ripped apart as his demons rained upon them, slaughtering and poisoning and devouring all in their wake. Yet he didn't think that would be the case, at least at the beginning. Lucifer's gloating wasn't limited. Just as surely as he'd want to gaze upon his destruction of the race, he also had a desire to confirm his victory over one of his least favorite brothers, and it was with this in mind that Gabriel made sure to be leaning casually against one of the walls of his hidden home, one hand splayed before him in an utterly relaxed gesture that made him look to be examining his vessel's nails, when Lucifer materialized there.

"Nice to see you, Luce," he greeted in as offhand a manner as possible, forcing himself not to grin at the half-gasp of shock that halted at the Devil's lips. "Lovely portal you've opened up there."

He couldn't see it, of course. But the waves of screams and snarls pounding against his ears were enough to tell him, not to mention the overwhelming psychic energy that strained his mind to the point of agony. There was no question as to whether the portal had been properly opened.

"My armies are here, now, in this very city—in the sky above and the earth around us," Lucifer half-spat, half-purred, his tongue lingering on indecision. Gabriel was practically joyous to see that he had initiated some amount of confusion in the vivid-eyed being—vivid-eyed, for Lucifer was no longer attempting to dim the gleam of his irises. They pierced through the hazy half-darkness that lay across the inside of the monument, shining like twin beacons of spiced irritation.

"Sure they are. But they haven't won, yet, and if you ask me, well—I don't think they're going to be able to."

"Why ever not?" The Devil's words were now verging on a snarl, his knuckles whitening where he curled them into fists. "They are a thousand times more powerful than your angels—"

"Actually, I'd say you've got the ratio reversed. One angel can probably handle around a thousand demons in combat close as this—"

"Which is of no concern. I have millions."

"Of course, of course. But they can't all tumble out of that portal at once, can they? After all, how big is it? Twenty yards across? So, let's do some high school math—though I suppose you don't know much about high schools, seeing as you've been hanging out under the Earth... in any case, it'll take a good number of minutes for all your cronies to pour out onto the planet. And we'll be against them the whole time. So long as we find a way to seal up the portal before the numbers get too intense—and we will, you can be sure of that—it'll be easy. The only problem will be tolerating your _whining _afterwards, brother, unless we manage to shove you in there along with the rest of them."

Lucifer' s jaw was stiff, trembling with barely-suppressed fury. It was clear that he had to exercise all matter of energy just to keep himself speaking steadily, and he began to pace forward as he did so, his hands tensing and un-tensing where they rested at his black-clad sides. "My _whining," _he ground out, "will be nonexistent. Perhaps you are overconfident of your abilities—so sure that you'll be able to stand against my demons, and find a way to close the portal... yet the Tesseract is mine. And you made a... most considerable point, in saying that a single one of you is worth all number of them..."

Gabriel knew what was coming, and so awaited it with a laconic grin. Lucifer, as he had hoped, took his display of understanding to indicate nothing beyond ignorance, and so continued to move closer, till they were scarce a breath away from one another.

"...They, for that reason, are harder to destroy. You must eliminate a thousand of their petty souls to justify a single of your own. Yet I can weaken your forces impossibly by such an action as _this." _

The staff was in his hands all at once, and Gabriel didn't flinch as its curve-bladed tip arched forth through the air, drawing a thin quicksilver line that settled against his chest, directly over the fragile sternum of his vessel. Energy shot along it, braced against him and every bone within him, yet he felt it as just that: energy. Electrocution. Lucifer, it appeared, had forgotten the fact that Gabriel's very soul was fundamentally different from the others'—he was powered by stars, and stars, though quite nice to look at, had no spirit. There was nothing for his attempted possession to harness.

The light sprouting from the tip of his staff fizzled and snapped in confusion, darting about around Gabriel's ribcage and shoulders, but drawing forth nothing more in its wake than a slight bothersome tickle. He tilted his head to the side, eyes wide and calm as before, placid pools of dark brown into which Lucifer's infuriated scowl was unflatteringly reflected.

"Looks like that's not gonna work for you this time, brother. Pays to keep up with the family, you know—a relation like you ought to know when your little sibling's had a big surgery like this."

"You _swine," _Lucifer got out, his eyes momentarily flaring with such an intense gold that the back of Gabriel's skull ached. He flashed the staff back and forwards, aiming for the same target once more, but this time with an all too physical goal. Yet before the blade could plunge into his exposed flesh, Gabriel twisted, and was instantaneously away from the monument, Lucifer's scream of spite still ringing in his ears.

He blinked in the sudden bright sunlight, rolling his shoulders a couple of times to extinguish the last traces of the shock that had bounded through him. He was on one of New York's sidewalks, and beside him were the others—Raziel, Uriel, Michael, and even Ramiel, whose eyes were hard with understanding—he didn't need to be filled in, despite his long absence after his fall from the ship; it was far too clear from the state of the streets that he knew just what had taken place.

It was nearly impossible to miss, after all. Writhing on almost every square centimeter of exposed space, with the notable absence of a five-yard radius around where the angels clustered, there were demons—disgusting things, of all shapes and colors, yet all bearing the same chilling gold eyes, pinpricks of light that glared through flesh, scale, fur, and feather. They were monstrosities, out of their vessels—like half-assembled creatures, most barely capable of physical functioning due to distorted and absent limbs. A few human corpses already lay crushed and smeared across the street where the wicked creatures had reached them, yet the majority of the population, Gabriel was relieved to see, had already barricaded themselves inside the buildings that towered around them—yet a number of the demons were beginning to throw themselves against the doors and windows and even solid bricks, fighting blindly to reach their prey.

"Alright, what are we doing?" Gabriel questioned, finding himself turning instinctively towards Michael. The blonde angel took a deep breath, straightening up, though the feigned calmness could do nothing to hide the clear agony raging behind his clear blue eyes. The human race, though factually inferior, was dear to the elder angel—he would sacrifice one here or there, of course, yet they were God's children, some relation of his own, and to see them be put through such absolute devastation was surely ripping him apart from the inside out. Gabriel, on the other hand, felt little more than anger. He could spare time for regret and mourning later; for now, he had to focus on destroying these awful Hell-creatures, on putting Lucifer back in his rightful place at the base of existence. The rest could come later.

"As much as we can," the archangel decided, glancing between the rest of them. "Ramiel, Raziel. You two will be in charge of defending the humans—nothing against the demons, only protection. We need that. Gabriel and I will take to monitoring the borders so that no great number of them manage to escape the island. And Uriel, you must kill as many of the demons as you can—no matter how many come, keep bringing them down."

Uriel responded with a sharp nod, and Gabriel bit back his own words—there was no reason to let Michael know that it wasn't going to work; the other angel was doubtless already aware. Despite his high talk to Lucifer inside the monument, there simply weren't enough of them.

A flap of wings beside him served as a contradiction.

Breath trapped in his throat, barely allowing himself to believe what a bracing psychic tendril told him to be true, Gabriel turned—and, sure enough, there was Ezekiel, head high, eyes blazing acid green—yet not uncontrollably. There was something in the set of his features that conveyed some amount of possession over his wild attributes, and Gabriel didn't need to ask, didn't need to know what had happened to bring his brother to this. All that mattered was that he had succeeded, and now he was here, and he was exactly what they had needed.

"Welcome back," he greeted.

Ezekiel's teeth glinted in a grin. "Thank you."

"Ezekiel—" Michael's voice cut between them, much more harried than Gabriel's, and his blue eyes were wide as they scanned the green-tense figure before him. "You came to help us? Are you...?"

"Controlled. For the time being. Tell me what to do, brother, and it will be my pleasure."

Gabriel felt the approach of Raziel and Uriel on either side, and Michael's eyes flickered briefly over his five soldiers, before a solid nod brought his thoughts together. "Very well. Everyone else, as I said. Ezekiel—assuming that you have all the strength of your greater form—"

"I do."

"Wonderful. You are... very strong, to have achieved that. It is your job to pursue Lucifer—I know not if any of us are capable of taking him, but you come the closest. Please, though, be careful—I beg you, brother, do not hesitate to save yourself if your life depends on it. You are far too valuable for us to lose."

"Even he will find it nearly impossible to kill me, I'm sure," Ezekiel murmured, then straightened up again, his pupil-less eyes somehow managing to focus on the form of Michael. "Thank you. I will do my best."

"Your best is what we need."

Without another word, Ezekiel allowed his wings to let themselves loose. They snapped out in a whirling explosion of black feathers and green fire, so massive that the demons closest to the angels' vacant circle shrieked and drew back in protest against the tempest of energy that had taken root. Ezekiel spoke no more—and perhaps he was incapable of it, but it hardly mattered, for it was clear that he was still aware of his actions as he turned and beat his wings powerfully, launching himself through the streets and flattening the scores of demons that swelled in his path with verdant blasts that reverberated through the pavement beneath the other angels' feet.

"Good... he will serve us well," Michael noted. "Now, the rest—off, swiftly; we have no time to lose!"

Raziel was the first to respond, for she was the tensest with the heat of the battle. She wasn't used to working in environments such of this, though, of course, she was completely capable of handling them when forced into their midst—her proficiency was in the silent arts, and the rage of battle that surrounded them now set her itching, desperate to set off on her own.

Of course, that solitude wasn't complete—she had the company of Ramiel, one of the brothers whom she was most unfamiliar with, though she trusted him nonetheless. He was wordless as well as they set off from the knot, his hammer clutched in his heavy fist, with eyes for nothing but the demons and the people trapped behind the nearest building, a supermarket.

"You go on and get them," Raziel suggested. "I can take care of the apartments over there."

"Very well."

He gave her nothing more, but she didn't need it—in a flash that she couldn't help but sigh in relief at, her thin, dark wings thrust out from between her shoulder blades, and she was above the ground in instants, beating her way up through the air. It brushed cool against her cheeks and down her throat, soothing the anxious burn that had built there, and, above the writhing demon-choked streets, she was able to think better, form a proper plan as she observed the wide glass-and-metal building that she had told Ramiel she would be defending.

The easiest method would be, of course, to take the people from the top, since barely any of the deformed monsters were capable of proper flight, and she would have no problem with dispatching those that were. Yet there would be nowhere to take them—she could allow at least some amount to remain on the roof, but it wouldn't approach the whole of the building's shrieking contents, and the demons were probably soon to bring the whole structure down, anyways. It was already quavering, rocking back in forth in such immense movements that they churned in her own stomach, but she allowed herself to pay that no heed. She couldn't afford to be afraid, herself, or the humans were doomed. She was their savior now. Her job was courage, confidence, and she had no choice of turning it down.

_Courage. _That was what she had to do—encourage the humans, imbue them with the warm strength that would serve as a drive towards defense of their own, if she was lucky. They had to see that they had a chance—and for her, of course, that meant fighting.

A rakish grin nudged at the edge of her lips. Raziel was good at fighting.

_No time to waste. _Heartbeats after the thought first crossed her mind, she was curling in the air, then shooting herself down, mustering as much pure power in her core as she could. A few of the demons whipped around to face her, their unblinking and discolored eyes straining with the force of their own shrieks, and she spared none—in a single whip of light, she summoned a bolt of energy and drew it across the space before her, instantly vaporizing a good thirty of the creatures and leaving nothing but a tar-colored smear on the pavement, though it was almost immediately overtaken by more. The power was immense, and it ached against her muscles, yet she couldn't stop—the people inside were just beginning to cease their howls of fear and instead allow soft noises of wonder and disbelief, of _hope, _to escape their trembling lips.

They trusted her. Good.

She managed to summon two more mighty bolts of power before it truly began to tax on her, the strain taking form in a paling of her wings against the wide, demon-dashed skies behind her. She forced herself to stay afloat, knowing that she couldn't display a hint of the weakness that was beginning to rear up inside of her. She could keep fighting—she'd have to summon a different sort of strength, that was all; that of her vessel would serve her at least as well as that given to her by her father.

"Alright, you scum," she ground out through her teeth, the sound buzzing against her eardrums. "Final prayers?"

She waited for no response, but instead dived forth, her own arm extended this time. The first thing her fist collided with was the encrusted skull of a mostly formless muddy creature, and she hooked her heel under the jaw of a tiger-headed beast at the same time, kicking up and ripping the whole of its lower face off with the force. A new swell of wails from the demons wreathed around her, but, as one after another peeled into nonexistence underneath her punches and slashes, she could only smile.

Her brother, meanwhile, was not being nearly so efficient. Ramiel had managed to clear a few of the demons away from the glass-fronted supermarket, though there were still waves pouring upon it. Still, he couldn't bring himself to focus properly—his attention, despite his better attention, kept obsessively wandering towards his brother, the treasured sibling who had tried to kill him.

Lucifer was here somewhere—close, perhaps. The thought was enough to create a nervous stir in Ramiel's stomach. It was Ezekiel's job to kill or at least incapacitate the Devil, yet Ramiel couldn't help but he had at least _some _right to it, and so it was that his wide blue eyes scraped across the sky above him rather than the army around him, tracing the clouds of screaming black back to their source—_there._ A clear fissure in the sky, parted above the top of what was unmistakably Gabriel's monument.

_Gabriel's monument... _that was it. That was where Lucifer was.

Before he knew what he was doing, air was flashing past Ramiel's pearl-white wings, colorless fury flaring behind his eyes. Damned if Ezekiel was assigned the role by Michael. He had the right to this—_only _he did. He had grown closer to and fallen farther from Lucifer than any of the rest, not to mention came the nearest to being killed by him. His passions would do nothing but fuel him, and he knew now, beyond all else, that the Devil had to be erased from the Earth.

It was only seconds before he was beside the monument—not on top, for Lucifer wouldn't want to be so close to the demons that he despised; they were his soldiers, but nothing that he personally cared for. On the contrary, he regarded them with at least as much disgust as the humans and angels did—for he was, after all, an angel himself. Even now, as Ramiel landed before the shadowed figure with his wings splayed far behind him and his face drawn into a perfectly composed expression, as he regarded the brother he had loved and lost, as he braced his hammer-bearing hand to strike—even now, he could not allow himself to forget that Lucifer was just as much of an angel as he was, as any of the rest of them were.

"You truly have fallen," were the rusty words that emerged from his lips.

Lucifer's grin was piercing. "Oh, yes," he acknowledged easily. "I know that, dear brother. Now you do, too. You were truly idiotic, to stay loyal to me... haven't you learned that they don't care? They don't care that _you _care. They only want to adhere to their own narrow definition of _good. _They don't understand. You came near understanding... but you're with them, now. You're... with them."

The plain repetition was uncharacteristic, and, there, Ramiel saw it—amidst the hurricane of demons, with a massive, thick shadow sheathing the whole of the city, with battle heat rearing in his stomach, he felt everything freeze. For it was there, much as he tried to pretend otherwise. Rippling across Lucifer's still maniacally grinning cheek was a single tear. Perfectly clear, with no trace of the gold that poisoned his eyes—Ramiel felt himself sinking even as his external posture remained perfectly arranged.

"Brother," Ramiel managed to get out.

"Not anymore," Lucifer spat, and was gone.

* * *

He was not alone when he reached the roof.

Heavy breaths were coursing through him, and a potent fury swelled under his skin, stirring at his veins—not at the people or the demons or even the angels, but at himself, at his own absurd weakness, for he had allowed himself to shed a tear—and even that single indicator of vulnerability was too much, _far _more than the King of Hell—than the King of _All—_deserved to be able to release.

So absorbed was he in this pressing aggravation that he didn't notice the other occupant of the rooftop till he turned to regard him.

And, this time, it wasn't Gabriel—instead, he was staring into the pure green eyes of his most volatile brother, whose wings rose behind him in a chilling arch of ebony and acid, sizzling and sparking, building with pure power.

Cold wind snapped across the roof. There were perhaps three yards of burnished metal between them—Lucifer could try to escape, yet something held him frozen, frozen as Ezekiel's wings beat against the wind and against his ears. Suddenly, it seemed as if all the other noise was drowned out, leaving nothing but the pound and thrust of those long raven feathers, scraping through the mist-infused, smoke-stained New York sky.

"You are nothing," Lucifer was saying, though even he didn't believe it—he had intended, before, to turn Ezekiel against the angels, and with good reason.

He was powerful.

Immensely.

More powerful than Lucifer.

"You do not stand a chance against—"

He wasn't given a chance to finish before the green-eyed beast threw himself forth with a massive, blood-icing howl, and everything exploded into a raging ocean of green and black.


	13. XIII

**XIII**

The humans, though still writhing desperately, seemed safe enough for the time being. At least, that was what Raziel told herself as she whipped around, wings churning against the air once more, and flapped swiftly away from the apartment building that she had been protecting. A few screams followed her departure, but there were barely any demons still alive on the expanse of sidewalk that she had bombarded, and those which were still twitching would have a good deal of trouble trying to make their way over the barricade formed out of the corpses of their fallen companions. A few humans may be picked off, but Raziel shook the thought aside—she had more important things, vaster numbers to attend to. Mainly, the portal itself—she had little trouble realizing that the demons were only coming faster, and the angels couldn't stand up against them forever. They had to do something else—specifically, they had to close the portal, and that was exactly what she intended to do.

It yawned vast and ugly over the familiar New York cityscape, dark cirrus clouds churning and blurring into a pit of flaming scarlet, sparks licking out around the few edges not already sealed off by squirming demon bodies. It wasn't large, but it was enough to chill even her blood—as disgusting as any human portrayal of the Apocalypse that may litter famed art museums, yet all the more terrifying for its definition, its _reality, _here and glaring straight across what should be a relatively peaceful city—peaceful as far as Earth cities went, in any case.

Even as she flew, she felt some small part of herself quailing, and hated that part. Yet it was true that there were thousands of demons pouring out of the gaping maw of the sky—_ironic that Hell should come from above—_and equally true that they were capable of killing Raziel, of ripping her apart one feather at a time until nothing remained but traces of burnt ichor carried away on the wind.

They could destroy her.

Yet she couldn't let them.

The fissure in the sky was pouring forth from the top of Gabriel's Seraphim Monument, presumably where the Tesseract was positioned, and so it was for there that Raziel aimed now, fighting the urge to slow down as she neared the massive bronze shape, jutting into the whirling clouds above. She'd always thought it to be a rather unattractive construction, but now it seemed almost hellish itself, as demented as the army that it was allowing through. Its surface flared into more and more immediate view, and then, before she could listen to the snarl within her stomach begging her to turn back, her feet were touching down on its cold surface, charred with ash from the portal yawning above it. Wind curled around her, but nothing else—it was almost completely empty, with only two other forms perched atop it beside her own, even as demons clawed and gasped mere yards away.

One of these shapes was the Tesseract, raging a more potent and vivid gold than she'd ever seen, perched just in the middle of the wide curve of the roof. Long, burned incisions radiated from it, the shadowed rays of its molten sun, presumably scarred with pure power—and near one of these stood a hunched human shape, the recognition of with sent a cool shudder through her stomach.

Erik Selvig, chin tilted towards the fiery skies, eyes solid gold.

"Selvig," Raziel breathed, seeing no purpose in disguising herself—of course. It only made sense that Lucifer would use him even now, yet to regard him was remarkable in the most painful of ways. Selvig was one of the pastors she barely knew, even in her brief time with Holy Shield, yet his worn face and silver hair were unmistakable—unmistakable and horrifying, to see now twisted into an expression of such demented glee, stemming not from his own frail human heart, but rather the pure power of the Devil.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he breathed, not so much as looking at her. Lucifer's words, in his mouth. The wind howled mightily, as if in tempestuous agreement, and Selvig's chest shuddered in an entirely uncharacteristic giggle. "It's all his... all his creation. Our Lord..."

"You aren't yourself," Raziel spat, her voice ringing against the bronze below them.

"I do not need to be. None of them will be, once he has taken over. They will either be under his control, and better off for it... or they will be _dead."_

Lips curling, she snapped—her fist, the weapon that had murdered scores of demons mere moments ago, whipped around all at once, colliding ferociously with Selvig's forehead. A cry of pain escaped his lips, the gold immediately dimming from his eyes, and he collapsed to his knees with a heavy gasp, arms folding over himself in an instinctively protective gesture. Raziel drew back, her chest heaving. Selvig let out a low groan, and she wondered briefly whether she'd actually hurt him—she certainly had no intention to. After a few long moments, however, he looked up, and her stomach warmed at the sight of his stare returned to its usual watered-down blue.

"Ra... Raziel?" he gasped.

He recognized her, even after their sparing encounters. She supposed that was a good sign.

"What... oh God... what have I done?"

Of course—what he'd be seeing right now was the whole of the sky above them, overflowing with demons as it was, and she knew that he was acute enough to be able to match it with the likely gap in his memory and realize that it was his fault.

"Lucifer. He was the one to do it, not you." Raziel found herself on her knees with no recollection of having fallen to them, and her hands settled over Selvig's shoulders, gripping him as tightly as possible to suppress the shivers that were jolting through his whole body. "Selvig, listen to me. We need to close the portal—Lucifer was the one to open it, but he will never tell us how to repair his actions. I don't even know where he is right now—perhaps overseeing his own chaos from some distant vantage point." But her thoughts were flying away from her and carrying her words with them; she needed to focus on the present, on who she was talking to and what she had to obtain from him. "Uriel was also possessed, but I managed to rescue him from Lucifer's grasp a while back, far before the portal was opened. You're the only one who could plausibly know how to close it, after having spent so much time with him—Selvig..." She took a long breath, all too aware of what the lack of comprehension on his face implied. She could be wrong. It was possible that he had no idea what she was talking about, and Lucifer really had done a perfect job with blocking his memories, stealing his mind... yet it couldn't be. There was no such _thing _as a perfect job, and Raziel refused to start believing so now.

"Selvig, _listen to me. _This is the most important thing you've ever done, do you understand?" A fresh gust of wind, accompanied by the caterwauling of myriad distorted demons, fell across her face, and red curls tangled between her lips, marring her words. She combed them out of the way with impatient desperation. "I know it's hard, and I know your head must hurt, but you have to think _hard, _harder than you ever have before... he was in your mind, and he _can't _do that without leaving traces. Think. _Think, _Pastor."

As if the mention of his title instated a fresh sense of determination in him, Selvig's forehead screwed into a form of hard contemplation, his jaw straining with tension. Raziel watched, unblinking, as his lips flickered and twitched, before a word finally managed to spill forth.

_"...Staff."_

"Staff?" Raziel repeated, trying to suppress the eager heat that was climbing in the back of her throat. "His staff? Lucifer's?"

"Yes—yes, it contains his power... tap it against the Tesseract..." Selvig glanced over his shoulder, as if to confirm the presence of the object he spoke of; sure enough, there it sat, seeming somehow smug in the awareness of its own wickedness. "...Hard enough to break regular stone... it should disturb it, enough to seal the portal, to... effectively _break _the Tesseract itself, at least until it's given time to heal. It's not perfect, but—"

"But it's all we need," Raziel cut across, wings thrusting forth to properly bring her to her feet once more. "All we need is the staff itself."

"Lucifer has it..."

"But where is Lucifer...?"

Her words were caught off by a flash of psychic perception, so fierce, so burning, so _green _that it nearly drew a gasp from her. The telepathy was wordless, but the pure sensation of it was enough to bring a grin of triumph to her pale lips—of course. Though she'd chosen to dull their voices, the rest of the angels hadn't been ignoring hers, even as she didn't attempt to transmit it. They knew just what she needed—knew, and, in the case of Ezekiel, already had it.

"It looks as if your Lord is already defeated," she breathed, and allowed her eyes one more brief flash up towards the sky as she shot herself over to the opposite side of the monument, on the cracked sidewalk where Ezekiel was waiting. The demons still pounded forth, but she knew that they wouldn't for much longer, and that was enough to fill her with a shiver of hope that the rapid beating of her wings fanned into a raging flame.

* * *

Nicholas Fury, unlike the rest, was not on the island that was being attacked by demons. He had been stationed elsewhere—specifically, in Washington DC, in the cold marble confines labeled as the office of one of the most elite and competent defense teams in all of the United States. Michael had left him here, with brief words imploring him to be careful, to let slip no more than he needed to—just enough to convince the council that there was no reason to panic about the chaos currently taking place over New York.

_We probably won't need too long, _Gabriel had added before the stony-eyed angels took off, _but if humans try to interfere, they'll just mess it up. You need to keep us clear—if you don't, we'll know, and so will the millions of innocent people living in that city. Well, they won't actually know, seeing as they'll be torn limb from limb, but you get the idea._

Fury had gotten the idea, far more firmly than he would have wished to, and that same idea caused sweat to snarl forth from his palms now, so that they itched where he clenched them. The nameless council would be open to him in mere moments, and he stood at their door, awaiting the opportunity to enter, to present himself—he knew he didn't look as well as he ideally would, with his dark garments still burned and torn from Lucifer's attack on the ship and his eye patch fraying around the edges, though perhaps his appearance would only do more to convince them—he had no way of knowing. The movements of the government were baffling to him, even despicable, and he was carefully planning his words now, so that he might not burst out into an explosion of frustration when the time did come for him to speak properly to them.

"Pastor Nicholas Fury." The voice was calm, radiating from a hidden PA speaker in the narrow, high-ceilinged hallway, and he was on his feet before the third syllable was pronounced. It was ridiculous of them to announce his name and not just open the door, as there was no one else waiting for an audience with them—in fact, it wasn't meant to be a day of meeting at all, but his mere knowledge of the semi-secret government branch, combined with the pure desperation that he had thus far conveyed in every syllable of his speech, had been enough to earn him an audience with them, however brief.

It was time. Fury drew in a long, shallow breath before taking the few steps towards the wide wooden door that he'd been staring at for the past half hour. It was remarkably heavy, but he managed to shoulder it open with only the slightest strain, determined not to express the faintest sign of weakness. Within instants, he was pinned under twenty pairs of the most calculating eyes in the country, at the base of what was arranged like a wide courtroom, Fury at the bottom and center of the wide marble floor. An exquisite but dim light fixture dangled from the wide arch of the ceiling, illuminating him but leaving the rest of them mostly in shadow. He folded his arms as soon as he reached the center, the resonant echoes of his footsteps soon drowned out by the crash of the door he'd just moved through. None of the wordless council so much as flinched.

It was a woman who finally spoke, her face pale and lined, silver-blonde hair cut sharply to her chin. Her light coloring rendered her more visible than any of the rest of the cold observers, and it was clear that she was meant to be their leader.

"Nicholas Fury. You come before us today with the claim that you are aware of the substance that's currently destroying New York City."

"Substance?" Fury repeated, fighting to keep a scoff out of his voice. "It's not a substance, I can promise you that." Damn, though, he couldn't let them know about the angels... he had to be careful. "It's creatures; that's all I can say. Ferocious, demented creatures, and they're going to rip the population apart—or they were, but there are others, people who can fight them, tame them. I know this sounds insane," he continued as the silvery woman's lips began to curl, "I know that very well, but it is imperative that you understand—my operatives are the only ones who will be able to tame these beasts. Any other attempt will only result in more damage—and the unquestionable death of whoever executes it."

"That sounds awfully like a threat, Mr. Fury."

He restrained a shout of disgusted impatience. "Then you have selective hearing," he replied as delicately as possible. "I—"

"We have seen what is happening to New York City—only from above, for every camera has stopped transmitting—but the devastation is remarkable, and we need to do what we must to stop it as swiftly as possible. Whatever you may say, Pastor Fury, it is far too clear to all of us that your precious _operatives _simply aren't doing their job."

"Another hour." He knew that he was placing blades to the angels' throats with his words, but it was his last card to play, and he threw it out with as much power as possible. "Give them one more hour, and they will prove—"

"There is nothing left to prove. They have failed."

_"They are angels!"_

He bellowed the words without thinking, his final twisted fragment of restrain snapping away. It was foolish—more than foolish, yet he had nothing left to give, and the council _must _understand how important it truly was, that they must leave the job out of the hands of humans—yet even as he perused them with his single wide eye, searching out for any sign of relenting, of understanding, their ranks granted him with nothing but disdain. They thought him insane at best, and his stomach churned even before the thin, dry lips of the head woman spoke again, her words now flavored with irritation.

"Thank you, _Pastor _Fury, but we are a branch of the _national government. _The ancient separation of church and state—as you may remember, one of the principles that our very country was founded on—would render it both wholly absurd and entirely illegal for us to restrain from rescuing one of our population's nerve centers on account of the _angels _that may be protecting it."

Fury felt his teeth grinding together, and didn't even bother to try and loosen him. His chest was boiling, and he knotted his fingers together, heated mind dashing rapidly through other possibilities, trying to seek out anything else, _anything _else he could say to win back any portion of faith they'd ever placed in him. Yet he knew what he had done wrong. He had destroyed his last chances with his entirely true words, and his insides twisted with the pure unfairness of it all.

"I _implore _you to listen to me. Your council is certainly tormented by the decision you must make—and I am telling you right now, directly, that I offer an immediate situation—"

"There are other reports," a voice from somewhere in the shadowed recesses of the crowd announced. The woman at the head of the council turned quickly, her grey eyes narrowed.

"Speak again?"

"Reports, from New York, over emergency transmission lines..."

Fury's chest began to buzz slowly, hopeful heat swamping his mind. He knew not whether it was as he wished, yet there seemed to suddenly be a possibility, a beautifully real possibility that he did, after all, have some chance of success in his single task left.

"Continue."

"There is speak of angels... in fact, all seem to communicate the same—humanoid creatures with wings. Defending them."

Fury turned back to the leader, not daring to speak a word even as every aspect of his posture was oriented towards the single goal of conveying his earnestness. She contemplated him for a full three seconds, eyes silver slits in her stark face, then nodded slowly. A near-gasp flew to his lips—_he had done it—_

"Hallucinations."

The mess of syllables crashed against his ears like a series of thunderclaps, and, immediately, he could think of nothing but the consequences, even before he had fully made the conscious realization that she had vetoed his words for a final time. _Hallucinations. _She didn't believe, _they _wouldn't believe, and that meant she would send others... it was horrifying, unbelievable that the very structure of the country was so weak, so easy to fall prey to perceived _reality _rather than the truth that was being screamed in its very face...

"They are not _hallucinations," _he began to snarl, but she lifted a long-fingered hand for silence, and he didn't dare object.

"They are. You certainly heard some mention of this yourself, Pastor, and were quick to try and inform us... I'm sure it's not unusual for those of your employment to grasp at any apparent materialization of your faith. But these are hallucinations, and if there are many in common, that is sure to be the result of a drug released to the city... gas, perhaps. Something very dangerous, to account for the deaths that are also being reported. Most likely infusing the sufferers with an uncontrollable need for destruction… to the point where they're tearing apart the cities and themselves. It may be a nightmare, but it has been a plausible reality for far too long, and it appears that our doomsday has finally arrived—at least for New York. You are quite right, Pastor Fury—there is no hope of us rescuing the city, if it's immersed this deeply in whatever may spark these imaginings... there is only one thing left to do."

He was frozen, unable to so much as breathe as the fate of millions lingered on her calm, thin lips. When her voice hit him, it was like a sword stroke.

"We will bomb the island."

* * *

Fury's prayer hit Gabriel in a fiery rush, enveloping his mind so ferociously that he nearly slipped up against the demon he was currently battling, barely able to tear its throat open before it would have launched itself at his own. The words from the pastor were garbled, with only a few strong psychic associations perfectly distinguishable—still, they were enough to tell Gabriel everything he needed to know.

_Didn't believe—hallucinations—bomb, they're sending a bomb and—_

He didn't need to listen to any more; his wings, already expanded, caught and lifted him higher, metal grinding against air as he slipped away from the demons. His dark eyes flitted towards the portal at the top of his tower—it took only a brief dash of telepathy to understand that Raziel was there, that she had Lucifer's staff and was near closing it.

_Wait, _he commanded her.

_I can't wait! They're coming faster, and we're—_

_Just wait._

Bomb—for Fury's words to have as much potency as they did, he would have needed to be alone, in a room unaffected by the mental signatures of any other people. He was out of the meeting chamber, then, perhaps even out of the building. The council he'd sought out had already had more than ample time to do what they had to, to set the missile that he mentioned on its path.

It was instants later that he heard the whistling.

_None too quick with that, Pastor, _he noted somewhere, only half-noticing that the words managed to reach their target. Already, he was shooting through the air, strands of oxygen shoved behind him with the power of his pounding red and gold wings, their intricate gears shrieking with the pressure of propelling him forth. He could sense the missile as it approached, something large and heavy, trailing potential devastation in his wake—thankfully, it was something solid enough, and he figured that he should be able to grasp onto it and take in the direction that he needed. Where exactly that may be, he wasn't quite sure, but knew it would come to him—

—And it did, as he flew under the Hell portal.

_Of course._

There was an odd tightness in his chest as he swerved around, arms extending to encompass the surprisingly small form of the silver weapon that dove towards him. It was hot against his chest, buzzing with devastating energy so eager to be released, but he felt chilled, detached. He was entirely aware of the danger of what he was approaching, yet also knew that there was no way to avoid it. He needed to do this—if he didn't, millions of the screaming human lives below him would be extinguished, and though he may be _worth _them, that didn't mean he would be able to exist with the knowledge of his own neglect afterwards.

_Try to keep it open for me, would you? _he shot towards Raziel as he burst past her. A brief glimpse of her sage-green stare, turned up towards him in horrified disbelief, clung to the back of his eyelids as he escalated, but he couldn't allow it to reach him properly. The portal, glowing deep crimson, was closer and closer with every passing instant, and the bomb was humming below him—and then, all at once, he was through it, and every last trace of frost that had before found a root inside of his chest was now entirely vaporized, replaced by such an intense surge of fire that he couldn't manage to draw his flimsy lungs into any sort of breath.

Hell was aflame. The screams and howls of demons deafened him until he couldn't remember what anything else sounded like, and his skin was near boiling with the pressure of the roaring fire that shone despicable scarlet in every direction for as far as he could see. Shadows extended too far, and the wails of the damned interwove with those of the demons, so that he could sense nothing but pure, blazing _horror, _the epitome of evil twisting inside of his body until it was all he could imagine, all he could comprehend. He didn't feel the bomb slip from his arms, didn't hear the shuddering bang as it exploded upon coasting to the brimstone-cracked ground, invisible below the mess of chained, writhing, bloody bodies that twisted and thrashed upon it. The heat, the _heat _was everywhere, and his wings—

_His wings—_

The metal was smoking. He could feel the loosening of all the carefully constructed gears and plates and screws even as a haze began to settle over his mind, and then some part of him knew that he was on the verge of falling—whether back to Earth or farther yet into the recesses of this terrifying dimension, he had no idea. All of his thoughts were departing in a scarlet mist, and the last thing he felt was the bracing, trembling realization that he, Gabriel, one of God's archangels, had at last been confronted with his end.


End file.
